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Religion in the Digital Age: Course Objectives

Participating in the UMW Domain of One’s Faculty Initiative really helped me think about how to use digital learning in my classroom. That wasn’t an easy task, as I’m of a generation that came of age before all of this newfangled technology and someone who enjoys the thrill of the microfilm chase. But with a little coaxing, I can shed my Luddite proclivities and jump into the digital humanities with the zeal of the newly converted.

So I’ll be blogging about a course I’d like to offer sometime next year—Religion in the Digital Age. The basic idea of this course was to encourage students to investigate how individuals engage with notions of religion and the sacred in a digital way, as well as to examine how religious groups (denominations, etc.) contend with the challenges of getting their message across in a variety of electronic media. I really don’t know if anyone else has started a course like this; I’m just winging it here.

So, without further ado, here are the first draft course objectives for Religion in the Digital Age (RELG 331+prefix to be assigned later):

• Familiarize students with sociological concepts of religion (for example, why do people join religious groups; how do religious groups define their boundaries; why do people leave religious groups; how do notions of race, ethnicity, class, and gender influence these decisions)
• Explore how digital venues alter, reflect, or continue trends in religious affiliation, practice, and belief
• Encourage a web presence by the students in the course (either by blogging, setting up an interactive website, or using Tumblr)
• Promote an understanding of the methodologies involved in studying religion in an academic setting

(I’ll likely edit and add to these.)

Next up will be a draft syllabus, arranged by week and subject. Then I’d like to add some assignment/assessment ideas. Comments and suggestions are always welcome! Since I didn’t get the curricular development grant I applied for, I’m designing this in my “free” time and can use all the help I can get. Come join the fun!

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Control-Alt-Delete (rebooting after the semester)

Spring 2015 is in the books. The grades are done, the graduates are off to new adventures, and the campus is quiet (except for the incessant construction noise). This semester was particularly hard on the students, faculty, and staff at UMW, what with (in chronological order) the arrests of student protesters, the murder of a beloved student apparently at the hands of another student, and the culmination of a particularly acrimonious faculty governance debate.

In light of these events, it’s been even harder to find my voice and write, now that I have the time to do so. I have traditionally found the first few weeks after the end of the spring semester to be the most challenging weeks for writing. Teaching a 4/4 load requires a certain amount of recharging when the grades are finalized, and it’s not easy to shift gears into researching and writing mode. So I lose a precious week or two to the simple need to relax and refocus. Yet I have to write now, because the same 4/4 load (plus service commitments) makes it exceedingly difficult to accomplish my professional and scholarly tasks during the academic year. It’s write now or write never.

I’m also in a holding pattern in terms of my book manuscript. One reader report is in; the other is not. I haven’t seen the first–nor should I without the second–and so I can only speculate about whether I’ll be asked to make minor or major revisions.

But I’m not completely without a writing voice. I’ve submitted a piece to Then and Now, and I’m making glacial progress in editing a piece I’ve written for the Journal of Southern Religion. Waiting for me to return to it is another article, only in draft form, about the black/white interactions at a black Baptist seminary.

Perhaps this blog post can help me make the transition. Maybe it won’t. We’ll find out soon.

 

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SAE, Yik Yak, and the new issues of speech on campus

The civil rights struggle is nowhere near its goal. At least that’s my take on what’s going on at Oklahoma University as it bans SAE from campus (“as far as I’m concerned, they won’t be back,” President David Boren was quoted as saying). But banning a single fraternity won’t really address the problem, either at OU or anywhere else in the country.

The video of fraternity brothers and their guests, all in elegant attire aboard a chartered bus and destined to a celebration, reveals young people using the “n word” and casually referring to lynching as they declare and revel in the otherness of African Americans. Indeed, there are no faces of color in the short clip, which may indeed be why some on the bus felt comfortable enough to reveal their prejudices. But that comfort is surely gone now that the video has gone viral, two students have been expelled, and public outrage rises. In the same week that saw thousands of people gathered to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, these students remind us that the struggle is far from over.

Addressing these students’ behavior is certainly important. But taking proactive steps to prevent such incidents is even more important. As Michael Twitty, scholar of foodways and race, so eloquently puts it, “I want to heal the cancer not blast the lesion.” As long as teachers, professors, administrators, and generally everyone pretends that we have settled the matter of race  in our society, videos like the SAE clip and incidents like the racist parties the movie Dear White People lampoons will continue.

Some faculty and many students have discovered the harm that can come from social media, as students take to Yik Yak to post anonymous comments, in one case notably ignoring a lecture to post “yaks” about the professors leading the class. Comments on the app range from racist to sexist to threatening and show how cruel their fellow community members could be when they can hide behind anonymity.

So what is the answer? More dialogue, not less. More exposure to history and current events. A requirement that the students on that bus write a detailed paper about the images found in Without Sanctuary, an interactive website centered around a collection of lynching postcards and images James Allen spent years tracking down. Perhaps then they’d be able to see why decent and honorable people do not joke about hanging anyone from a tree. Better yet, start a dialogue in our classrooms and residence halls and dining halls now about how words hurt. Encourage students to imagine themselves as members of a different ethnic group, sexual orientation, gender, or even as professors teaching a class. Developing empathy is a long-term process, and we must start now.

 

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Vannevar Bush and the Jetsons and Bell Labs

After reading Vannevar Bush’s seminal (ugh, what an androcentric term) article on the need for integrated access to information,  I thought about how my own being owes its existence to the telephone company. My father and mother met at Bell Labs in New Jersey the early 1960s. Unlike Bush’s forecast, however, both were working in technology and science. My mother was not a “typist” or a “girl.”  She was a woman who used a degree in mathematics to program very early computers. Bush, like so many other futurists, could only see technological change not social change. Just like the creators of the Jetsons television show, his vision of future kept gender roles firmly rooted while imagining a world of technological advancements that would improve life for all involved.

Thankfully, my mother saw a world where she could take part in the future in a less gendered way than Bush saw.  And thankfully Bush’s ideas helped generate what became the Internet and search engines and all the wonderful things that the Jetsons couldn’t quite imagine. I have no need for a jetpack, but I love that I can use Google to discover my father’s patent. I may not understand what a convertible binary counter and shift register is, but if I want to get to the bottom of it, I’m sure the Internet can help educate me. Strangely, though, while my father’s patent lives on in an easily discovered search, his own life does not. He died in 1996, before digital profiles and web sites and social media would have immortalized more of him than just his 30-year-old invention.

 

 

 

 

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