-> Choose a moment in the class when you experienced a significant perspective shift or “aha” moment. This perspective shift could have been about religion in general, or about religion within the context of the U.S. history, culture, and society. Perhaps your “lightbulb moment” occurred when you read a specific reading, watched a specific film, or attended a specific class session — or perhaps it involved a more graduate shift due to insight gained over the course of several weeks. (The important thing here is that the topic you choose be something that truly interests you. If you’re not sure about what might work, feel free to ask me!)
-> Then, teach about this topic to someone outside of this class. This could be anyone — a friend, a family member, a roommate — but it must be a real person who has agreed to participate and have their responses documented. It could even be a group of people, if that is an option for you.
-> Exchange of ideas: While your teaching activity could involve a more traditional format such as a presentation of ideas followed by Q & A, I encourage you to make it interactive from the start. Perhaps you introduce some ideas, solicit questions from the person you are teaching, and follow up by sharing more about the topic with them. Overall, there should be some form of dialogue involved.
->Sources: In your teaching activity, draw upon at least one chapter from the Themes in Religion in American Culture textbook, and at least one other class source (this could be a lecture, a film, or an article/ book chapter). When using the course texbook, pay attention to how these chapters are centered on different themes (“Theologies,” “Proselytization,” “Supernaturalism,” “Cosmology,” “Race,” “Ethnicity,” etc.). Choose the chapter whose theme best aligns with your topic. Again, feel free to reach out to me if you are not sure which chapter to use. Rather than simply picking a detail out of this chapter, use it to give some background structure and context to your teaching activity.
->Media: There are many different media you could use for your teaching project. You could have a live, face-to-face conversation. You could have a phone or zoom conversation. You could exchange ideas through email, through a text message conversation, or through a series of social media posts or messages. Feel free to get creative here – consider to “teach” someone as you would do in your everyday life. (What media do you usually use to share ideas outside of school)?
-> Document your teaching activity. Written reflections on the teaching experience are NOT sufficient. If you hold a live conversation, you might film or make a voice recording of it (which you are welcome to edit down or select segments of). If you hold Zoom conversation, you might use the Zoom feature to record and make a voice transcription of the conversation. If you exchange emails with the person, you could provide me with screenshots or saved pdfs of that email conversation. If you have a conversation through social media posts or messages, you might compile screenshots of them (just be sure that you have the permission of everyone involved in the conversation).
-> Compile your documentation of the teaching activity into a single file that you will submit in this submission portal in Canvas. It could be an mp3 or mp4 file, a powerpoint (with a different screenshoot on each slide), a link to a youtube video or other media source, or a perhaps a single pdf document. I am open to a wide variety of format options, but please email me in advance if you are uncertain about whether the format you have chosen will work for this.
-> Length: There is not exact length requirement or limit given the wide variety of media I am accepting. But as a general guide, video or audio conversation should be approximately 5-10 minutes long, email conversations should be somewhere between 4-5 pages long, and powerpoints based on screenshots of social media posts or messages should be about 10 slides long. (Please note, however, that these guidelines are a very imperfect estimation- I am less concerned with exact lengths than I am with the substance of your teaching activity).
->When you submit your assignment, including a note in the submission / grading comments area that briefly explains who you chose to teach your topic to, and what your relationship is to that person (if this is not included in your documented teaching activity already)
I want to do either the email or text conversation with another person so if you and someone you know can do a text or email conversation back and forth of you teaching them the concept and them responding consistently and then uploading screenshots of the conversation for my submission.
