Teaching Toward Eco-Justice:
Where Sustainability and Social Justice Meet in Theological Education
July 26-28, 2010 | Hunthausen Hall | Seattle University Campus
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION
PLEASE NOTE: dates have changed from June 16-18 to July 26-28.
Graduate level professors in theology and religious studies with experience teaching courses that focus on links between their discipline and ecology are invited to apply for this three day consultation. It will gather ten professors from around the nation who teach “ecology and theological studies” and who desire to expand “ecology” to “eco-justice.” “Eco-justice” here refers to the convergence of ecological concerns and social justice concerns, with particular attention to injustice based on race/ethnicity, economic status, and gender. Participants will collaborate to:
1) Identify pedagogical challenges;
2) Construct questions and knowledge for meeting these challenges;
3) Disseminate this knowledge; and
4) Build collegial support for teaching eco-justice.
Why This Consultation?
A vital religious environmental movement has emerged in the United States and Canada. Seminaries, divinity schools, and other graduate schools of theology are developing programs in “ecology and religion” under various rubrics. Secular bodies, including networks of renowned scientists, have also called for religious wisdom to enter the quest for ecological sustainability. This movement is diverse, widespread, and burgeoning with creativity. A growing number of schools in graduate level theological education and professors in a wide spectrum of theological disciplines are beginning to teach from ecological perspectives.
Religious and secular voices concerned with social justice caution that efforts to address global warming and other aspects of the “Earth crisis” will either exacerbate or reduce existing injustice based in race/ethnicity, gender, and class. Therefore, they advocate holding social justice and ecological well-being as inseparable in the quest for a sustainable relationship between the human species and the planet. Eco-justice is a term for that linkage.
Profound pedagogical problems and possibilities accompany the movement to bring theological studies to bear on the issue of ecological sustainability, especially as it connects to issues of social justice. This consultation will enable professors in many fields of theology to uncover and explore these pedagogical issues, practically and theoretically, with an emphasis on the former.
Students and future students of participating faculty will be more equipped for scholarship and ministry that contribute the resources of Christian traditions to one of the most compelling and consequential tasks facing humankind today: reversing humankind’s current path toward ecological disaster, and doing so in ways that diminish forms of social injustice linked to that ecological devastation. More specifically, students will be more equipped to recognize links between ecological well-being and social justice, and between these and Christian faith. Students will be better prepared to engage in biblical interpretation, theological reflection, theo-ethical inquiry, and liturgical design that address the Earth crisis, and to lead others in those arts.
Please note the following information about the consultation before applying for it.
This is a consultation between colleagues with considerable experience, not a consultation taught by one particular expert. Therefore, prior to the consultation, participating faculty will:
Write and submit a one page informal “think piece” identifying one or more pedagogical issues related to teaching in “eco-justice and theological studies,” and preliminary questions for exploring that issue collaboratively at the consultation. These eight “think pieces” will inform the design of the consultation.
Read and, to the extent possible, reflect on the “think pieces” produced by the other participants.
To the extent possible, read or peruse a text supplied by the project.
Survey a number of “Teaching and Learning Activities” developed by religion and philosophy faculty of the Pacific Northwest in a project sponsored by the Curriculum for the Bioregion Initiative of the Evergreen State College. These will be posted on-line.
Following the consultation, participating faculty may be invited to submit an essay/chapter for an edited volume that could arise from this consultation.
The consultation will draw upon resources available at Seattle University including:
An outstanding Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and its highly accomplished Director and Associate Director.
A regional “Curriculum for the Bio-Region Initiative.”
The university sustainability program.
The Instructional Design unit of the Office of Information Technology
Faculty from various schools and colleges teaching in such areas as critical race theory, natural sciences, environmental studies.
Project directed by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Seattle University Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Program in Environmental Studies and School of Theology and Ministry. Funded by a grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Sponsored by Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION Please note: dates have changed from June 16-18 to July 26-28.