White Jesus and Antisemitism: Toward an Antiracist and Decolonial Christology

This article argues that traditional Christology is intimately bound up with a triumphalist agenda that denies Jesus’ Jewishness and is structurally antisemitic. Taking an antiracist stance, the article argues that systemic rethinking of Christianity’s theological resources is needed, which must be anti-antisemitic and antiracist. This involves reconfiguring how we take on board Jesus’ Jewishness in a post-Holocaust context and recognizing Jesus as a Jewish prophet. From this, it is tentatively suggested that rethinking the role of the Messiah involves understanding a Levinasian Messiah who does not come, but rather calls upon us to act in a Messianic role before the Other as an ethical imperative.     

Getting Out of the Left Lane: The Possibility of White Antiracist Pedagogy

This article maintains that knowledge of the literature on multicultural education and social justice pedagogy is indispensable for white college professors who desire to teach effectively about racial justice concerns. In exploring this literature, I have noticed that many publications either articulate theory or reflect on concrete classroom strategies, while relatively few deploy theory to evaluate specific attempts at teaching for justice. This seems to me a gap worth filling. Speaking as a white, conventionally trained, Catholic theologian, I begin by explaining why I deem it appropriate to employ antiracist pedagogy. I then demonstrate that the literature on multicultural education and social justice pedagogy is essential to this effort by utilizing both types of literature, theoretical and practical, to analyze my own strategies and goals to date. Throughout, I discuss white antiracist theological pedagogy not as an accomplished fact, but as an emerging endeavor. See a companion essay in this issue of the journal (Anna Floerke Scheid and Elisabeth T. Vasko, “Teaching Race: Pedagogical Challenges in Predominantly White Undergraduate Theology Classrooms”), and responses by the authors of both essays, also published in this issue of the journal (“Responses: Toward an Antiracist Pedagogy”).     

The Relationship Between Rorschach Responses and Attitudes Toward Parents

Effects of self-ideal discrepancy and favorability of content on subjects' acceptance of personality interpretations were studied. Subjects accepted more favorable than neutral statements and more neutral than unfavorable statements. A significant effect was found for self-ideal discrepancy and for the interaction between self-ideal discrepancy and content favorability. In contrast to moderate and low discrepancy subjects, high discrepancy subjects accepted more of the interpretations, accepted more unfavorable, and rejected more favorable interpretations. High discrepancy subjects also accepted more neutral interpretations than did low discrepancy subjects. High discrepancy subjects expected to receive more negative feedback than low discrepancy subjects, and also interpreted this feedback more negatively than did low discrepancy subjects, while scores for the moderate discrepancy subjects were consistently between these two groups.     

Teacher Beliefs and Responses Toward Student Misbehavior: Influence of Cognitive Skill Deficits

This study aimed to examine whether having knowledge of student cognitive skill deficits changes teacher beliefs and responses in regard to classroom misbehavior. Teachers (N = 272) were randomly assigned to an experimental or control condition. Although teachers in both conditions read the same vignette describing a student's misbehavior, the experimental group also reviewed information about the student's cognitive skill deficits. Teachers provided with cognitive skill deficit information were, on average, less likely to believe the student had control over the misbehavior, suggesting perceptions of unintentionality. Furthermore, they were significantly more likely to indicate positive emotional responses. Results suggest that school psychologists may consider sharing cognitive skill deficits information with teachers who are working with students displaying challenging behavior.     

The kotel: Toward an ethnographic portrait

An ethnographic portrait of the ‘Western Wall’ (kotel) in Jerusalem, is presented. The kotel is viewed as a pilgrimage site, a ‘place of memory’, and a location linked to a story. Most discussions of the kotel stress its history and archaeology, while this study utilizes ethnography to understand the meanings of the site to a range of social categories. The challenge faced by ethnography is that the social context of the kotel is constituted by Jewish groups all over the world and by cultural distillates stemming from millennia of history. By providing both an overview of kotel activities, and a more detailed examination of several kotel occasions, the paper points to the potential contribution of ethnography to understanding national‐religious shrines.     

Education for Critical Community and the Pedagogy of Asylum: Two Responses to the Crisis Of University Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - The current heated debate on the deteriorating status of the university raises a range of pertinent questions, including: What role can the humanities play in...     

Bonhoeffer and Bultmann: Toward an Apocalyptic Rapprochement

In the 1950s and 1960s, the relation between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rudolf Bultmann was a topic of much dispute, with Gerhard Krause declaring the apparent opposition between them ‘resolved’ in 1964. Recent apocalyptic theology has reopened the divide between them by claiming Bonhoeffer as an apocalyptic thinker over against Bultmann. This article disputes that reading by arguing that the very conditions under which Bonhoeffer is rightly understood as apocalyptic open up the door for a new interpretation of Bultmann. The question of their relationship reveals the ambiguity surrounding the notion of apocalyptic. There is a pressing need for greater clarity regarding this notion as well as greater charity in relation to Bultmann.     

Toward an embodiment-disembodiment taxonomy

Psychological, neuroscientific, and linguistic evidence suggests that a mental scene is in principle cognized with a mental gaze that can take on one of three forms: embodied physical gaze, embodied mental gaze, or disembodied mental gaze. Combinations of these forms also occur. A first sketch of the embodiment-disembodiment taxonomy that emerges from this threefold distinction is presented.     

Forms of Concern: Toward an Intersubjective Perspective

The growing interest in the issue of concern, which appeared relatively late in psychoanalytical literature, resulted in several distinctions. Winnicott distinguished between concern as an expression of guilt and concern as a manifestation of joy, Brenman Pick distinguished between real concern and spurious concern, and Bowlby distinguished between sensitive and compulsive caregiving. The basic concepts of Buber’s dialogical philosophy and intersubjective approaches in psychoanalysis have created fertile ground for the study of concern, and enabled us to conceptualize these distinctions in a way that has heretofore been lacking in psychoanalytical thought.     

Caring for students: Pedagogy and professionalism in an age of anxiety

University teachers are strongly motivated by the care they feel for their students. Yet today, many are frustrated. On the one hand, it is becoming harder to teach well, as more diverse student populations, new media, and new educational priorities challenge conventional pedagogical postures and styles. On the other hand, teachers are wary of calls for greater pedagogical professionalism in an increasingly managed and de-motivating professional environment. This essay examines two movements in the United States that attempt to sustain teachers' motivation by rethinking what caring for students requires them to do. The first, a call for a “scholarship of teaching and learning,” directs the professor's attention outward, towards inquiry into their students' learning; the second directs attention inwards, encouraging exploration of “the inner landscape of a teacher's life.” While both movements oppose a narrow view of pedagogy as simply technique, they address the challenge of caring for students in different ways and point to resolutions that appear to have different potential to alter the teaching environment itself. These tensions around teaching inscribe in higher education wider debates about the value of the professions, the nature of expert practice, and how to recover and ensure professionals' capacity for care.