Service

Teaching Islam Across the Curriculum

Teaching Islam Across the Curriculum is a grant-funded one-week workshop and associated Faculty Learning Community designed to create a community of teachers who feel empowered to teach about Islam in classes across the university.

According to a November 2018 university-wide survey around 45 faculty members at Ball State teach about Islam, Muslims, or the Islamic world with an additional 15 who would consider adding this content if they had support. These faculty members come from expected places, like Anthropology and History, but also some surprising ones, like Biology and Hospitality Management.

Of those who currently teach about Islam or would like to in the future, 29 expressed low levels of confidence in their ability to do so. The vast majority of professors at BSU who teach about Islam have no formal training in the subject. Of the 14 who do, seven indicated that they had only taken one course on Islam, and only 3 of those were at the graduate level. In short, most teaching about Islam at BSU happens outside of Religious Studies, led by faculty members who have no formal training in the topic and who feel insecure about this.

Teaching Islam Across the Curriculum is an attempt to address this need by providing these faculty with resources, training, feedback on assignments/lectures/course design, and an ongoing community of teachers working through similar issues and challenges.

Literature and Sacred Texts

I am currently chair of the Literature and Sacred Texts section of the Midwest American Academy of Religion. This section interprets both “literature” and “sacred text” broadly and solicits proposals for papers and panels that examine the intersection or connections between religion, sacred and/or secular literature, and the arts.