ABSTRACT

Teaching Religion and Literature provides a practical engagement with the pedagogical possibilities of teaching religion courses using literature, teaching literature classes using religion, and teaching Religion and Literature as a discipline. Featuring chapters written by award winning teachers from a variety of institutional settings, the book gives anyone interested in providing interdisciplinary education a set of questions, resources, and tools that will deepen a classroom’s engagement with the field. Chapters are grounded in specific texts and religious questions but are oriented toward engaging general pedagogical issues that allow each chapter to improve any instructor’s engagement with interdisciplinary education. The book offers resources to instructors new to teaching Religion and Literature and provides definitions of what the field means from senior scholars in the field. Featuring a wide range of religious traditions, genres, and approaches, the book also provides an innovative glimpse at emerging possibilities for the sub-discipline.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

Teaching Religion and Literature

part I|2 pages

Foundational Approaches to Religion and Literature

chapter 2|10 pages

Teaching the Bible and Literature

chapter 3|12 pages

Pedagogies of Religion and Literature, Or Writing the “And”

Nathan Scott, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida

chapter 4|13 pages

Openings and Closures in Religion and Literature *

Heart of Darkness or Demian, Life of Pi or Something New

part II|2 pages

Illuminating Religious Cultures with Literature

chapter 5|12 pages

Surrender to God, Surrender to Love

61Teaching Islam through the Poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi

chapter 7|16 pages

Redeeming the Human Reality

Teaching African American Religion and Literature

chapter 8|15 pages

Science Fiction and the Religious Imagination

A Pedagogical Approach

part III|2 pages

Thematic Approaches to Religion and Literature

chapter 9|11 pages

Opening the Secular

Teaching Religion and Culture through Fiction

chapter 10|12 pages

Interrogating Faith

Using Literature to Teach Religion and Nature

chapter 11|10 pages

Contesting and Contextualizing Islam in America

Teaching Three Cups of Tea

chapter 12|11 pages

Religion and the Self

Life Writing as a Literary Form and Religious Practice

part IV|2 pages

Three Approaches to Teaching Siddhartha

chapter 13|11 pages

Through a Buddhist Lens

161Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha

chapter 15|11 pages

Literature, Learning and Liberation

Teaching Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha