Reading
In my historical work on women and religion, reading has emerged as an important social practice, and this has led to my interest in different understandings of reading - what it is, what it does, what is involved - in different social contexts. This has in turn led me to consider the relationships between theory, method, and pedagogy when it comes to reading. How do we understand reading as a research subject, and how do scholars in anthropology and women's/gender studies (and other disciplines) use reading as a method? What is "ethnographic reading" or "feminist reading" (and to what extent are those terms helpful, or not)? How do university/college students learn to practice these and other types of reading, and how can this strengthen their capacity for complex thinking? What does a feminist pedagogy of reading look like?
Drawing on feminist new materialist approaches to learning situations, as well as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the humanities, I have conducted some studies on student reading in my university classes (articles posted below).
Drawing on feminist new materialist approaches to learning situations, as well as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the humanities, I have conducted some studies on student reading in my university classes (articles posted below).
Reading "maps" created by students in my class "Women in Christian History" to gain an overview of how Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her co-authors in The Woman's Bible (1895, 1898) read the account of Eve and Adam in Genesis 1-3 in the context of the early women's movement in the United States.
In-class reading exercises"Bringing Reading
into the Classroom: Using Active Learning to Practice the Invisible Skill," in the International Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, 2019. Download PDF |
Reading and complex thinking"From Reading to Thinking: Student Lines of Thought in a Seminar on Christianity and Colonialism," in Teaching Theology & Religion, 2019.
Download PDF |
Pre-class reading exercises"The Importance of Making-While-Reading for Undergraduate Readers: An Example of Inductive SoTL," in Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 2021.
Download PDF |
Reading maps"Mapping Eve: A New Materialist Approach to Concept Maps as 'Working Objects' in the Humanities Classroom," in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 2023.
Download PDF |