Papers Session Annual Meeting 2023

Embodied Pedagogies: Teaching Asian American Religions

Monday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Grand Hyatt-Crockett C (4th Floor) Session ID: A20-106
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

This co-sponsored session highlights creative pedagogies in teaching Asian American religions. Each presentation offers a different perspective on how Asian American religions are taught, including what is typically overlooked. One paper makes a connection between therapeutic well-being and Asian American history in Asian American evangelical spaces. Another offers an innovative pedagogical approach to teaching Buddhism to high school seniors, while the last one focuses on the particular methodological questions that arise when Asian/Asian American women teach religion in the classroom. We welcome active audience engagement as part of the larger conversation. The Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society unit's business meeting will take place after this session.

Papers

In this paper, we propose that the public pedagogical practices of contemporary centers of Asian American evangelical higher learning revolve around self-care. Indeed, we argue that what these programs do is to personalize the learning of Asian American history as a therapeutic practice for personal application. Using the methodologies of virtual ethnography and digital archiving, we examine the conferences and seminars held by the Center for Asian American Christianity (CAAC) at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry (CAATM) at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the recent development in Asian American pedagogy at New College Berkeley, as well as the Asian American Christian Collaborative’s (AACC) partnerships with institutions of theological education such as Fuller and Wheaton College. In so doing, we show that the transformative pedagogy that is imagined in these Asian American educational spaces in their conference hosting emphasizes a relationship between Asian American history and personal psychological wellbeing that is at present undergoing theoretical development.

This interactive presentation surveys the past and reimagines the future of “Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard” (L2BB), an experimental ten-week course organized as a collaboration between a high school religious studies teacher and a scholar of Asian American Buddhism. Conceived as part of an experimental school-within-a-school that seeks to reimagine the “grammar of schooling,” L2BB seeks to overcome pedagogically limited approaches to the study of Buddhism that contribute to the ongoing erasure of Asian Americans, including the local Chinese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese Buddhist communities the students partnered with during the course. Emphasizing student perspectives from the L2BB 2022 and 2023 high school student cohorts, as well as graduate students in education in 2023, this presentation aims to generate feedback to contribute to L2BB in 2024 and to help inspire similar projects across the country.

In this paper, we investigate the importance of building a narrative for Asian/Asian American Women, teaching religions in Higher Education in North America. In the 21st Century, especially after the Covid-19 outbreak, threats from racism and sexism still challenge society. Therefore, higher education institutions, instructors, and students have been searching for possible ways to incorporate how they feel, address, and understand this threat in research and education. In particular, instructors who identify themselves as women with Asian backgrounds face intersectional challenges while teaching Asian-related topics to students who could be impacted by Anti-Asian hate crimes. Instructors and students need a common understanding of Asian Americans’ experiences in the US. This paper aims to share our challenges and possibilities in classrooms using existing works of literature. Our question is: “How can our own narratives based on race, gender, and classism better guide teaching, and how can we continue collaborating for Pan-Asian/Asian American solidarity?” 

Audiovisual Requirements
LCD Projector and Screen
Play Audio from Laptop Computer
Tags
#American Buddhism
#women
#Asian American religion
#Buddhist pedagogy
#teaching religion
#racism
#narratives
#asianamerican
#sexism
#Buddhism in classroom
#Asian American Buddhism
#Buddhist pedagogy #teaching religion #Asian American #Christianity #women #evangelicalism