Erotic Education: Elaborating a Feminist and Faith‐Based Pedagogy for Experiential Learning in Religious Studies

This essay explores intersections among Jesuit, Quaker, and feminist theologies and pedagogies of social justice education in order to propose and elaborate an innovative theoretical and theological framework for experiential learning in religious studies that prioritizes relationality, called erotic education. This essay then applies the relational rationale of erotic education to interpret the author's design of a service or community‐based learning component in a course about contemporary U.S. Christian social justice movements, offered in both religiously‐affiliated and religiously‐inspired liberal arts colleges. The course case study not only chronicles the author's evolving pedagogical praxis as a feminist theologian teaching in Jesuit and Quaker institutions, but also is grounded in how the author's course embodies erotic education, that is, how specific objectives, learning practices, and assignments build and bolster relationships among students (in peer‐to‐peer small groups inside and outside the classroom) as well as among students and their community sites. In developing this framework and implementing it within this particular course, the author argues that erotic education emphasizes the naming and training of our existential desires for interpersonal relations in order to upbuild not only the individual but also the common good.     

An exploration of the relationship between academic and experiential learning approaches in vocational education

Background. Research on individual learning approaches (or learning styles) is split in two traditions, one of which is biased towards academic learning, and the other towards learning from direct experience. Aims. In the reported study, the two traditions are linked by investigating the relationships between school‐based (academic) and work‐based (experiential) learning approaches of students in vocational education programs. Samples. Participants were 899 students of a Dutch school for secondary vocational education; 758 provided data on school‐based learning, and 407 provided data on work‐based learning, resulting in an overlap of 266 students from whom data were obtained on learning in both settings. Methods. Learning approaches in school and work settings were measured with questionnaires. Using factor analysis and cluster analysis, items and students were grouped, both with respect to school‐ and work‐based learning. Results. The study identified two academic learning dimensions (constructive learning and reproductive learning), and three experiential learning dimensions (analysis, initiative, and immersion). Construction and analysis were correlated positively, and reproduction and initiative negatively. Cluster analysis resulted in the identification of three school‐based learning orientations and three work‐based learning orientations. The relation between the two types of learning orientations, expressed in Cramér's V, appeared to be weak. Conclusions. It is concluded that learning approaches are relatively context specific, which implies that neither theoretical tradition can claim general applicability.     

Teaching and Self‐Formation: Why the Ignoble “Intro to World Religions” Really Matters

This paper explores the idea that the educational process plays a vital role in the formation and transformation of selves. Peter Hodgson's theological interpretation of education as paideia and Lucinda Huffaker's work on the achievement of “clarity of self” are brought together to demonstrate that empathy is central not only to evolution of self, but the educational process as well. The argument insists that introductory courses are places of immense potential for helping students in the lifelong task of achieving self‐clarity. The “Introduction to World Religions“ course is used as a practical illustration of the thesis.     

Spiritual Machines,Personal Bodies,and God: Theological Education and Theological Anthropology

Programs of theological education in Christian traditions are exploring “distanced learning” as one way to address certain challenges to their educational excellence. A major strand in a twenty‐year old discussion of the nature and purpose of theological education has urged that analysis of theological schooling's failures and assessment of proposed remedies ought to be framed explicitly in theological terms as part of an ongoing inquiry into what makes theological education properly theological. This essay tries to show how following that advice can make a practical difference in assessing the merits of distanced learning. It does so by raising questions about the theological‐anthropological assumptions, respectively, of theological education and of distanced learning.     

James Hillman: the unmaking of a psychologist Part one: his legacy

This two‐part essay offers a critical assessment of Hillman's archetypal psychology and enquires into its viability as a psychological model. The first part explores his legacy and reviews the metapsychological frame in which his work operates. It considers the relation between his thought and Jung's, and argues that Hillman's work is not so much post‐Jungian as pre‐Jungian. The second part is primarily intrapsychic; it explores Hillman's character, as discerned through his writings and interviews, and considers his work as an expression of the puer aeternus. It is argued that the puer prefers to live in an eternal dream‐state resistant to growing up: yet denial of the maturational impulse will only lead to it happening anyway but in a negative form. The paper considers how Hillman's model was ‘unmade’ by the missing developmental element of his thought. Development is an archetypal and bio‐psychological necessity, and if rejected it can ruin any system that refuses to take it seriously. In Hillman's case this manifested in the form of a repressed masculine shadow, destroying the credibility of his earlier work. The two‐part paper attempts to weave an objective appraisal with a running commentary based on the author's personal engagement with the man and his work.     

Common Core Thesis and Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Mysticism in Chinese Buddhist Monks and Nuns

This study explores the phenomenological structure of mystical experience among 139 Chinese Pure Land and Chan Buddhist monks and nuns. Semi‐structured interviews, thematic coding, and statistical analyses demonstrated that Stace's common facets of mysticism as measured by Hood's Mysticism Scale (M Scale) successfully described Buddhist experience as modified by Buddhist doctrines. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that these facets could be formed into Stace's three‐factor structure. A mystical introvertive unity hypothesized to be separate from an extrovertive unity instead converged in the Chinese Buddhist context. These results lend strong support to the thesis that the phenomenology of mystical experience reveals a common experiential core that can be discerned across religious and spiritual traditions. These data also demonstrated that this common core can and should be explored using mixed methods.     

Working with chronic and relentless self‐hatred,self‐harm and existential shame: a clinical study and reflections

This paper is the first of a two‐part series which explores some of the theoretical and experiential reference points that have emerged in my work with people whose relationship to their body and/or sense of self is dominated by self‐hatred and (what Hultberg describes as) existential shame. The first paper focuses on self‐hatred and the second paper focuses on shame. This first paper is structured around vignettes taken from a 14‐year analysis with a woman who was bulimic, self‐harmed and repeatedly described herself as ‘feeling like a piece of shit’. It draws together elements of Jung's concepts of the complex and symbol, and Laplanche's enigmatic signifier to focus on experiences of ‘inner otherness’ around which we are unconsciously organized. It also brings Jung's understanding that emotion is the chief source of consciousness into conversation with Laplanche's approach to the transference which is that by being aware that they do not ‘know’, the analyst provides a ‘hollow’ in which the patient's analytic process can evolve. These combinations of ideas are linked speculatively to emerging understandings of the neuroscience of perception and throughout the paper clinical material is used to illustrate these discussions.     

Indonesia's Nurcholish Madjid and Abdurrahman Wahid as intellectual Ulama: The meeting of Islamic traditionalism and modernism in neo‐modernist thought

This paper examines two of Indonesia's leading Islamic intellectuals, Abdurrahman Wahid and Nurcholish Madjid, and the movement of thought with which they are associated, neo‐Modernism, a new movement in Islamic thought in Indonesia that emerged amidst much controversy in the early 1970s and has since been of considerable influence in the development of Islamic thought, particularly amongst younger Muslim intellectuals. The paper argues that this new movement of thought represents the coming together of Islamic traditionalism, Modernism and Western education in the persons of a generation of thinkers from traditionalist backgrounds, who as youths obtained a pesantren (traditional religious boarding school) religious education and then went on to undertake modern Western‐style, higher education. In doing this it focuses on the life experiences of two of the most outstanding thinkers to emerge from this generation: Nurcholish Madjid, a respected scholar and public figure and one of Indonesia's leading Islamic intellectuals, and Abdurrahman Wahid, currently serving his third term as chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the leading traditionalist organization (and with a claimed support base of 35 million, Indonesia's largest Islamic organization).     

The alchemy of training

Abstract: Training in Zurich has its own special character but also is marked by the very fact that it is in Zurich. Zurich radiates its own distinct energy and carries a specific historical significance in the world of analytical psychology. This, like all things with psychic energy, has a spectrum of meaning. This spectrum, as well as the ‘spirit’ of the place, will be critically examined, taking into account the ‘blessings’ and ‘curses’ of such genius loci. Training in Zurich is experientially based and is first and foremost an initiation: an initiation into symbolic life, or rather life where symbol plays an important role. Training is understood to involve a transformation of one's self, much like the 8^th century alchemist Morienus Romanus understood the opus as a ‘human transformation system’. It is not merely an education. The requirement of ‘immersion’ is core to the experience of becoming an analyst in Zurich and this sets up a valuable discomfort between rational intellectual learning and intuitive experience, between knowing and not‐knowing. How does this dis‐serve the making of an analyst? What is implicit in this immersion and its discomfort? Does it have a role in today's emphasis on clinical and empirical training? Does Zurich still offer something unique and valuable in the world of training, or is it passé? From these questions, the dichotomy of what is ‘urgent’ and ‘essential’ in training will be examined.     

What Mary Didn't Read: On Literary Narratives and Knowledge

In the philosophy of art, one of the most important debates concerns the so‐called ‘cognitive value’ of literature. The main question is phrased in various ways. Can literary narratives provide knowledge? Can readers learn from works of literature? Most of the discussants agree on an affirmative answer, but it is contested what the relevant notions of truth and knowledge are and whether this knowledge and learning influence aesthetic or literary value. The issue takes on a wider, not only philosophical, importance as it is one of the central tenets of humanistic education that art and literature are valuable not only because the pleasure they afford. This paper offers a new line of argument in departing from propositional truth, arguing that literary narratives provide aesthetically significant knowledge, however, this knowledge cannot be captured in propositional form. My position depends crucially on Frank Jackson's influential knowledge argument. The paper describes a modified ‘What Mary Didn't Read’ case. In doing so, it is argued that the knowledge literary works provide should be understood as a type of experiential knowing of ‘what it is like’ analogous to what Mary acquires in the original case of seeing a new colour for the first time. 1 1 I would like to thank first and foremost David Weberman for his comments on the draft of this paper. Also, I am grateful to colleagues at the 7th In‐house Philosophy Graduate Conference of Central European University for a productive discussion. Thirdly, I am indebted to Howard Robinson and Philip Goff for illuminating debates about Jackson's thought experiment.
     

Philosophy,and teaching (as) transformation

Abstract

This paper explores a paradox constitutive of transformation discourse in South Africa: the transformation of a fragmented society presupposes the existence of a collective Will; but the creation of a collective will can only result from a process of transformation. While politicians and higher education administrators debate how best to conceive and implement transformation, committed lecturers have to find ways of teaching the reality of that ideal full knowing that it is in part through teaching that this ideal is achieved. The 2010 HE Summit (HES) called on all universities to ‘purposefully address the issue of social cohesion as part of their transformation agenda’ (2010: 20). In this paper the learning encounter is posited as the paradoxical site where the assumption of a national subjectivity (‘social cohesion’) becomes reproductive of that subjectivity. This suggests a degree of ‘bootstrapping’ in the sense that the learning encounter necessarily posits a historical Subject that is paradoxically both cause and effect of transformation. This is an interpretative paper that reflects on what it means to practise philosophy in such a context. Taking Readings’s The University in Ruins (1996) as point of departure it starts with a general, historical reflection on the telos of higher education which is then contextualised with reference to the post-colonial university. Towards the end I briefly consider aspects of my own philosophy teaching praxis in light of that theoretical frame. I engage the ‘bootstrapping’ paradox by suggesting that teaching (as) transformation comprises four moments: making students aware of 1) the fact that they belong to specific socio-epistemic communities; 2) that this sense of community is an historical construct which 3) implies limitations on the possibility of knowing and being that can 4) only be questioned through an encounter with what is other to that socio-epistemic community. In short, it is argued that in a university context the possibility of ‘social cohesion’ is first and foremost a confrontation with the conditions for the possibility of inter-subjective learning.     

Challenging Racism and White Privilege in Undergraduate Theology Contexts: Teaching and Learning Strategies for Maximizing the Promise of Community Service‐Learning

This paper explores the possibilities and challenges inherent in employing community service‐learning as a pedagogy for engaging undergraduates in theology and religious studies courses that contribute to racial reconciliation. The paper summarizes research from the scholarship of teaching and learning on best practices for structuring service‐learning projects and processes that hold the possibility of students' genuine engagement with issues of race and the wisdom of the Catholic tradition.     

Theological Education: A Theological Framework for Renewed Mission and Models

Abstract : This essay explores renewed ways to reimagine theological education. Incarnation is used as a theological lens that engages anew “the transmission of Christian memory, the education for God's peace and justice, and the formation of church and community leadership.” Attention is given to apprenticeship, project‐based learning, distributed learning, and global learning, and concludes with implications for governance and faculty.     

How individuals with self‐reported anxiety and depression experienced a combination of individual counselling with an adventurous outdoor experience: A qualitative evaluation

Background: Adventure therapy is a short‐term experiential psychotherapeutic approach that utilises adventurous activities and being in natural environments in order to facilitate therapeutic change in clients. The present paper examines how students with self‐reported anxiety and depression experienced participating in an innovative intervention that combined individual therapy with an adventurous outdoor experience. Clients participating in the Adventure Therapy Project received between 10–15 one‐to‐one counselling sessions prior to the outdoor experience, as well as ongoing counselling following it. Method: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used in order to record and analyse the experiences of three male and three female students who presented at a major UK university student counselling service with self‐reported depression and anxiety. Findings: Twelve themes emerged which were categorised into four major domains: enhancing intrapersonal relationships; improving interpersonal relationships; providing an experiential outdoor venue for achieving therapeutic change; offering a secure, personal place for achieving inner healing. The intervention was perceived to improve the ways in which interviewees related towards themselves and other people. Interviewees perceived the counselling sessions as offering a safe therapeutic space within which they could unveil their anxieties and achieve inner healing. Conclusions: Outdoor experiences offer an experiential venue for achieving personal change and, it appears enhance the therapeutic process. Prior and subsequent individual therapy increases the benefits of such experiences.     

‘My language thing … is like a big shadow always behind me’: International counselling trainees' challenges in beginning clinical practice

Background: While counsellor education becomes increasingly culturally diverse, little is known about international trainees' experiences of training. Objective: The present study explores one aspect of training, namely clinical practice from the perspective of international, non‐native speaking trainees. In particular, this paper focuses on the challenges this group encounters when practicing in a second language. Methodology: Semi‐structured interviews with four non‐native English‐speaking trainees were conducted and analysed following the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results: Findings suggest that participants encounter practical difficulties related to their non‐native/foreign identity in practice, such as problems with articulate self‐expression and understanding the client's speech. These difficulties generate anxiety and impact on the trainees' confidence. Conclusions and implications for counsellor training: This study elucidates language as a fundamental aspect of culture, and identifies second language use as a significant source of difference in counselling practice. This paper highlights the need for attention to linguistic diversity and for appropriate support during counsellor education. This will improve international trainees' experiences of training, but also enhance all trainees' understanding of difference, resulting in better service provision for the community.     

Bringing radical behaviorism to revolutionary Brazil and back: Fred Keller's Personalized System of Instruction and Cold War engineering education

This article traces the shifting epistemic commitments of Fred S. Keller and his behaviorist colleagues during their application of Skinnerian radical behaviorism to higher education pedagogy. Building on prior work by Alexandra Rutherford and her focus on the successive adaptation of Skinnerian behaviorism during its successive applications, this study utilizes sociologist of science Karin Knorr Cetina's concept of epistemic cultures to more precisely trace the changes in the epistemic commitments of a group of radical behaviorists as they shifted their focus to applied behavioral analysis. The story revolves around a self‐paced system of instruction known as the Personalized System of Instruction, or PSI, which utilized behaviorist principles to accelerate learning within the classroom. Unlike Skinner's entry into education, and his focus on educational technologies, Keller developed a mastery‐based approach to instruction that utilized generalized reinforcers to cultivate higher‐order learning behaviors. As it happens, the story also unfolds across a rather fantastic political terrain: PSI originated in the context of Brazilian revolutionary history, but circulated widely in the U.S. amidst Cold War concerns about an engineering manpower(sic) crisis. This study also presents us with an opportunity to test Knorr Cetina's conjecture about the possible use of a focus on epistemic cultures in addressing a classic problem in the sociology of science, namely unpacking the relationship between knowledge and its social context. Ultimately, however, this study complements another historical case study in applied behavioral analysis, where a difference in outcome helps to lay out the range of possible shifts in the epistemic commitments of radical behaviorists who entered different domains of application. The case study also has some practical implications for those creating distance learning environments today, which are briefly explored in the conclusion.     

Community Happens: Anatomy of a Remarkable Teaching Experience

There is no pedagogical philosophy or technique that ensures the emergence of genuine community in the religious studies classroom. But teachers can engage in activities that create the conditions for community and student transformation. Among these is strategic self‐disclosure – the practice of revealing one's own orientation toward a subject matter, a discipline, or the institutional context in which teaching and learning take place. But strategic self‐disclosure is not without risks. It can permanently alter the classroom environment and may tap into the teacher's insecurities. The author explores these matters by analyzing a remarkable teaching experience in which community happened. The editors welcome readers’ comments and responses on this article (e‐mail: wabashcenter@wabash.edu).     

Qualitative Investigation of Student Reflections on a Spiritual/Religious Diversity Experience

Twenty‐six master's‐level counselor education students participated in a spiritual and religious diversity assignment, which involved participation in a spiritual or religious activity for 5 weeks. Participants then discussed these experiences in reflection papers. After analysis of the student papers, the authors identified the following themes: (a) discomfort related to the experience, (b) initial assumptions regarding spirituality and religion, (c) movement toward appreciation of spiritual and religious diversity, (d) increases in self‐understanding, (e) the value of experiential learning, and (f) motivation for additional learning. The authors provide suggestions for counselor training on spirituality and religion.     

Ekstasis as (Beyond?) Jouissance: Sex,Queerness, and Apophaticism in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Ekstasis (ecstasy) is central to Eastern Orthodox theology, an encounter that sets the self on the way towards knowledge of and union with God. Ekstasis is fundamentally apophatic — achieved through the eschewal of cognitive knowledge, and experiential — precipitated by practices that foster self-renunciation and transcendence. This article examines how this notion of ecstasy, as narrated in the Orthodox theology of Staniloae and Lossky, can aid, and be aided by, queer theoretical claims regarding sex. Through examining Lacan's notion of jouissance and Bersani's utilization of it, as well as Williams's analysis of sex as “the body's grace,” this article explores how sex, particularly orgasm, can function as a spiritual resource, as a site of and practice towards ecstasy. This article concludes with a brief examination of the ethical implications of this frame.     

Identity,Individuation and Substance

The paper takes off from the problem of finding a proper content for the relation of identity as it holds or fails to hold among ordinary things or substances. The necessary conditions of identity are familiar, the sufficient conditions less so. The search is for conditions at once better usable than the Leibnizian Identity of Indiscernibles (independently suspect) and strong enough to underwrite all the formal properties of the relation. It is contended that the key to this problem rests at the level of metaphysics and epistemology alike with a sortalist position. Sortalism is the position which insists that, if the question is whether a and b are the same, it has to be asked what are they? Any sufficiently specific answer to that question will bring with it a principle of activity or functioning and a mode of behaviour characteristic of some particular kind of thing by reference to which questions of persistence or non‐persistence through change can be adjudicated. These contentions are illustrated by reference to familiar examples such as the human zygote, the Ship of Theseus and Shoemaker's Brown‐Brownson. The first example is hostage for a mass of unproblematical cases. The problems presented by the second and third sort of examples arise chiefly (it is claimed) from an incompleteness in our conceptions of the relevant sort—the what the thing in question is. That incompleteness need not prevent us from knowing perfectly well which thing we are referring to. In the concluding section, sortalism is defended against various accusations of anthropocentrism. The paper touches on the interpretation of Heraclitus, Leibniz's theory of clear indistinct ideas, the difficulties of David Lewis's ‘perdurantist’ or stroboscopic view of persistence, four‐dimensionalism, and the relation of personal identity both to experiential memory and to the particular bodily physiognomy of a subject. At some points—as in connection with the so‐called Only a and b rule—the paper corrects, supplements or extends certain theses or formulations proposed in the author's Sameness and Substance Renewed (2001).