Embodied Pedagogies in Religion provides a forum for creative, renowned teachers (professors and instructors) of religion to discuss ways in which they think about the embodied dimension of teaching and learning specific to their areas of expertise and how they have shaped their curriculum to engage and reflect their thinking. The goal of this volume is multiple: It will showcase deeply thoughtful and creative approaches to teaching and learning that will inspire other teachers and vivify the teaching and academic study of religion. It will raise complex epistemological and ontological issues that underpin the craft of teaching but are rarely discussed and even more rarely discussed with sophistication and about the craft itself. It will raise these issues in relation to multiple traditions that hold different and at times conflicting epistemologies and ontologies, thus opening a truly cross-cultural comparative dialogue. This cutting-edge volume is as an open-ended conversation that embraces the exploration of different pedagogies with different kinds of content and quests for different forms of learning and understanding. Ultimately this volume will contribute to a developing conversation in religious studies that move beyond rigid orthodoxies to a place of open creative, productive, and enacted exploration, cultivation, and theorization.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Embodied Pedagogy: Framing the Past and the Present 1. Hermeneutics of Engagement: Pedagogical Approaches to South Asian Religions at Naropa 2. 4E Cognitive Science and the Transformative Study of Religion Embodied Pedagogy and Teaching Sacred Texts 3. Bodies in Havruta-style Learning in College Classrooms 4. “Knowledge is said to be in a place”: Teaching an Ancient Esoteric Text Through Experimental, Embodied Reading Practices 5. Write a Rite! A Writing Pedagogy of Constructive Imagination 6. Learning the Body, Clearing the Mind 7. Embodying the Qu’ran: An Interview with Dr. Rahina Muazu Embodied Pedagogy and the Study of Religious Practices 8. Translating the Expressive Body: A Pedagogy of Embodied Practice Across Cultures 9. Mirror in the Classrooms: Integrating Contemplative Practices 10. Dancing Bare Feet and Sitting Cross-legged: South-Asian Movement Practice and Anthropology of the Body 11. Inviting the Ancestors to Class: Traditional Spirituality as Teaching Philosophy 12. My Experience with Ifá and Traditional Yoruba Pedagogy Embodied Pedagogy and the Study of Religion 13. Embodied Pedagogy and Embedded Religion: Taking a Bite out of the Apple 14. Readings from the Spirits, Dances with the Lord: The “Site Visit” as Embodied Pedagogy and Transformational Classroom 15. The Body as a Site of Knowledge: Moving Beyond Texts in a High School Classroom 16. Enabling Embodied Epistemologies in Disabled and Distance Learning 17. Educational Video Games and Embodied Pedagogies 18. Embodied Minds, Cultural Corpses, and the Work of the Dead: On Teaching the Anthropology of Death and Mortuary Ritual