Blog post 2: Faith 

Blog post 2: Faith 

1. How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?  

2. How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?  

3. Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. 

• Visit the Religion, Belief and Faith identities UAL website and answer the questions above.  

1. How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?  

1. The resource is a valuable conglomerate of various experiences documenting faith and frictions that arise when it comes to life within the academic institution.  

2. Separates faith and normative expectation; it makes a valuable distinction of white Christian experiences of faith within academia and Muslim female, intersectional experiences; how both are subject to faith-based hurdles in access and participation: yet both also must be appreciated within wider socio-political contexts.  

2. How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?  

1. In the past I have designed course syllabi on postcolonial Tunisia in the context of UG cultural geographical institution (Lancaster Environment Centre).  

2. Past work, considered feminist perspectives of Western educated students’ perspectives on the veil.  

3. Through conversation and art the CL and me as facilitator managed to deconstruct and reconstruct the relationship and imaginaries about the veil as a religious garment. 

3. Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. 

1. Postcolonial Tunisia Course Handbook, Written by myself. 

2. Fiction and art in the classroom. (References below) 

3. Propositional Artefact Walker (References below) 

• Choose a minimum of 3 headings from the ‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Stimulus paper (Modood & Calhoun, 2015) The PDF can be found on Moodle. Discuss two things you learnt from the text and one question/ provocation you have about the text.  

1. How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?  

1. Extremely useful in deconstructing British Identify and unpack the paradoxes of secularism, governance, theocracy, monarchy, and national narratives.  

2. Unique position of faith, Anglicanism, and social role of churches in British everyday culture, citizenship and provision of infrastructure and social net. 

3. In the rural sphere, church and parish community may be the sole sole source of social net. As nonchristian one may either become institutionally excluded from the village social life, or one must participate in faith-based activities that contravene one’s own religiosity.  

2. How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?  

1. My students are alerted to unpack the existing colonial heritage that shapes todays knowledge production; colonial ways of existence and how it shapes knowledge today; museums, universities, and research practice. Epistemologies and premises of dualism in knowing. 

2. Unpacking the implicit and significant role of Christian undertones to British academia and society will be a useful theme to explicitly expose my students to. 

3. Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. 

1. I conducted Field course to the Wellcome trust and therein we took a look at narratives of medical history. The students were tasked to identify the Christian narratives of salvation, benefice, charity, etc- “, the conflation of Church, Christianity and medical provision. “, and the Christian ancestry of the university as an institution.  

2. Through Foucauldian discourse analysis the students were able to identify the frictions such framings possess in excluding non Christian-Western-Eurocentric narratives of human-ness.  

• Listen to the Kwame Anthony Appiah Reith lecture on Creed.  

1. How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?  

1. The lecture is a wonderful and articulate declination of the ongoing transformation of religious practice as enacted life, rather than enshrined-immobile tradition.  

2. In the same way that nationhood, tradition, or myth are constructed and co-produced; faith and scripture too are not immobile throughout time, but alive and enacted.  

2. How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?  

1. This document (or case studies on this) could add value to class readings on the topic of cultural construction and sociality of the past in contemporary practice and imaginaries of the future. 

3. Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. 

1. Case studies that echo similar observations that are commonplace within my discipline are the untanglement of Scottish inventions of nationhood and the kilt; its linkage to Indian weaving and export trade interests, 

2. German national identity; (Forests, language and narratives of Germanic identity in the backdrop of Christianisation and Linguistic fraction; – and later the strategic persecution of religious and ethnic minorities). 

3. German Identity and Judaism; 

4. German national identity and faith (Protestantism and the contested meaning of Luther).  

• Read the terms of reference from SoN around Faith and choose an article to reflect on. Please consider the context of the article and respond to the questions above. 

1. How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?  

1. I am blessed with the partial perspective. I am by virtue of who I am and my biography bestowed with a number of marginal identity factors.  
   However, I am keenly aware that in matters of faith, religion and spirituality I am atheist; yet due to my background in anthropology; I am intrigued by the lives of those who are; and I am using cultural practices from my ancestry and past communities to keep in touch with my heritage; yet I describe these as transgenerational cultural encounters, rather than spiritual or religious experiences in the common sense.  

2. How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?  

1. I am offering my students the full remit to explore any topic they wish in their artistic and research practice.  
   I think in that context, it is important to let the students take the lead on sovereignty decide the path of their study journey. 

2. It is my scope to provide them with the intellectual toolbox to turn their explorations into a format that meets the frameworks of artistic rigour and productive –inquisitive creativity. 

3. Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. 

1. I wish to explore the SoN resources further. 

2. Additional publications that are relevant to this topic I wish to consult are  
   Barlow, C. and Awan, I., 2016. “You need to be sorted out with a knife”: the attempted online silencing of women and people of Muslim faith within academia. Social Media+ Society, 2(4), p.2056305116678896. 

3. Sabri, Duna, Christopher Rowland, Jonathan Wyatt, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Sarita Cargas, and Helenann Hartley. “Faith in academia: Integrating students’ faith stance into conceptions of their intellectual development.” Teaching in Higher Education 13, no. 1 (2008): 43-54.