Teaching Religion:
Pedagogy, Transmission, and Technology
Columbia University Religion Department
Graduate Student Conference
Friday, March 27, 2015
Joseph Pulitzer World Room (third floor)
Graduate School of Journalism
2950 Broadway Ave., New York, NY 10027
Schedule
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM: Registration/Coffee
8:30 AM - 8:40 AM: Welcome and Opening Remarks – Professor Courtney Bender, Chair,
Department of Religion, Columbia University
8:40 AM – 8:50 AM: Conference Introduction – Mark Balmforth and Joseph Fisher, Conference
Co-Coordinators, Columbia University
8:50 AM - 9:00 AM: Break
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM: Panel 1 - Teaching Religion: Inside/Outside
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"Religion: Learning "what it is" and "what it is like"
Jordan Kiper, University of Connecticut
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"Teaching Religion within a Prison"
Stephanie Thurston, Princeton Theological Seminary
"Interfaith Engagement as a Transformative Process: Filling the Gap in Higher Education"
Jem Jebbia, University of Chicago Divinity School
Respondent: Professor John J. Thatamanil, Union Theological Seminary
10:30 AM - 10:45 AM: Break
10:45 AM - 12:15 PM: Panel 2 - Pedagogy: Expanding the Classroom
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"Staging Effervescence: 'Theatre-Making' and Teaching Religion"
Charles Gillespie, University of Virginia
"Pairing Theory with Technology: Critically Engaging with Students in an Introductory Course
on Religion"
Tara Baldrick-Morrone, Florida State University
“At the Crossroads of Religion and Media: Notes from New York, Israel, and India”
Yogi Trivedi, Columbia University,
Graduate School of Journalism (Adjunct Professor) and Religion Department (PhD Candidate)
Respondent: Professor Samuel Freedman, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM: Lunch
1:15 PM – 2:45 PM: Panel 3 - Religion and Technology: Theoretical Approaches
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"Shaping Contemporary Religious Movements: Technological Theory and its Manifestation in
Digital Religion"
Jeff Appel, University of Denver
"Haptic Enchantment: The Material Pedagogy of Alternate Reality Games"
John Borchert, Syracuse University
“Individual Meaning-Making Processes, Alterity and the Internet: The Case of the Unitarian
Universalist Online Congregation”
Sofi Langis, Université de Montréal
Respondent: Professor Mark C. Taylor, Department of Religion, Columbia University
2:45-3:00 Break
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM: Panel 4 - Transmission in Islam: Teaching, Knowledge, and Tradition
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"Ibn Buṭlān’s Teaching Philosophy and the Nature of Knowledge"
Andrew McLaren, Columbia University
“’Islamic’ Religious Studies”
Hameem Rahmam, Graduate Theological Union and University of California Berkeley
“Teaching Virtuous People: Ebrahim College and the Role of Ethics in Islamic Education”
Hasan Azad, Columbia University
Respondent: Professor Katherine Ewing, Department of Religion, Columbia University
4:30 PM - 5:00 PM: Break
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM: Keynote Address - Kathryn Lofton, Yale University