Interfaith Dialogue: The Art of Listening

The political climate and discourse during the 2016 presidential campaign was divisive and unwelcoming of refugees, immigrants, Muslims, and other religious minorities. This toxic atmosphere was reflected on college and university campuses throughout the country. At Westfield State University, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students were the targets of verbal attacks, prejudice, and disrespect. The Muslim students, in particular, were afraid to walk around campus and attend their classes. The Interfaith Chaplains Council, along with the Interfaith Advisory Council comprised of faculty, staff, and students, met to discuss the current concerns of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students, and collaborated to create a listening event based on the World Café model. This article addresses listening as a contemplative practice for building just communities and shares the process that went into the creation of the “Interfaith Dialogue: The Art of Listening” event, as well as participants’ responses to the event

World Café to Listening Café: Creating a Community of Listeners and Learners

In Lectio Divina as Contemplative Pedagogy: Re-appropriating Monastic Practice for the Humanities (2018), I examined the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina as a contemplative method of reading, interpreting, and responding to sacred texts, and demonstrated how this method can be re-appropriated for use within the Humanities. Since the time of its publication, I have adapted this contemplative method in my literature courses as I find that it continues to keep the students the subject of their learning experience while strengthening their acumen to read, listen, interpret, and respond to texts. This article, which is a result of a SOTL grant (spring 2019), will describe how I adapted the Brown and Isaacs’ World Café (2005) and integrated it to create a community of listeners and learners in my World Literature course

Re-appropriating the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina: A contemplative pedagogocal method of inquiry to experience wisdom embedded in the humanities

The subject of this research is the re-appropriation of the ancient Christian contemplative practice of lectio divina, which developed and evolved in the monastic schools between the 2nd and 12th centuries as a way to search for and experience wisdom embedded in sacred and literary texts. This dissertation examines how this ancient practice can be adapted in an age of advanced technology as a way for educators to reclaim the contemplative dimension of education by supporting the students’ subjective exploration of learning. This dissertation gives an historical overview of the four movements of the monastic method of lectio divina: lectio (reading), meditatio (interpreting) oratio (responding) and contemplatio (experiencing wisdom), a personal contemporary adaption of each movement in a secular Humanities course, followed by some insights and challenges for educators interested in incorporating these practices into their Humanities course. Central to this dissertation is the concrete application of the lectio divina method as a viable pedagogical tool to guide students slowly and methodically through a literary text and into a subjective experience of Wisdom in their ongoing search for what it means to be human in age of advanced technology

Concurrent Sessions - First-Year Read/First-Year Writing: Inquiry and Interdisciplinary Transitions

Members of a composition committee tell the story of implementing a first-year read program within first-year composition courses at a Western New England residential university. Presenters will discuss the institution’s motivations for implementing the program and highlight some of the benefits and challenges. Drawing from: instructor reflections; formal and informal correspondence among faculty, staff and students; student texts; and contextualizing our work within current research about first-year read programs, presenters will ultimately ask participants to consider the local context at their school and the benefits and drawbacks of a first-year read housed in composition or another discipline