Episode 208: Review Session: What did we learn? Where do we go from here?

Transcript!

PDF transcript. Also available via our Buzzsprout page.

Shownotes
(because citations are political)

In this episode, we’re going to talk about what we learned this season. We’ll also reflect on being killjoys and on using public humanities scholarship as both research and teaching. Plus we’ll gave you a teaser for next season. It was a Clueless-themed, holiday season blast. 

So, today’s lesson plan: review our main takeaways for thinking about religion, race and gender; talk about teaching & offer a self-assessment; and spoil the heck out of next season.

We reviewed a ton of keywords! Find them in our glossary. They were:

• social construct, sexuality, gender, race, racialization

The 101:

(where we did the professor-work)

It’s the last episode of the season! So by now you know that you can’t understand religion if you’re not also thinking about race, gender, and sexuality. (Intersectionality, bitches.) Episodes E201-207 showed you that understandings of race, gender, and sexuality OUT OF religion. Not JUST religion, but not NOT religion—even when the connections between religion, race, gender, and sexuality aren’t immediately clear. 

Here’s what we covered this season:

• social constructs: we made them up, but they do real work in the world 

• race and gender as structure/work/violence that happens on
  & about bodies (our own and others)

• intersectionality as mandatory 

• Everybody HAS race, gender, and sexuality in the US and, y’know, the rest of the world

• Religion shapes our understandings OF race, gender, and sexuality in the US and, y’know, the rest of the world

• SO: no one—NO ONE, and definitely not Judith Weisenfeld—can think about religion without thinking race, gender, sexuality. And we don’t mean “not allowed,” we mean: you are fully not understanding what’s going on if you’re not paying attention to the material experiences and ways of knowing that make up the people who do religion.

Teacher’s Lounge:

A seasonal segment that has nothing to do with pumpkin spice or peppermint bark. This is where we talked self-assessment, a way for us to critically think about about OUR research and teaching here on the pod, just like we think critically about the work of others.

Because Keeping It 101 is scholarship, assessment is part of the game.

We think we do a lot well: clear communication; comedic explanation; wide ranging examples; lots of demystifying critical theory; clear articulation of stakes—why we care about religion.

But there’s always room to do better, killjoys! We think that we can work on: speeding through for effect; developing space for even more depth; bringing in scholars who can help us teach about the things we don’t know.

Coming up: Season 3

We’re changing formats just for this next season! There will be guests! There will be mini-arcs! There will be an attempt to fill gaps we know we have but you didn’t know you were missing!

Our guests include: Dr. Simran Jeet Singh, talking about public scholarship, Sikhi, and representation; Dr. Shaily Patel, talking about magic, religion, and Christian Bible; Dr. Ali Olomi, talking about Islam, jinn, and texts; and Dr. Anthea Butler, talking about white Christian racism via her new book, White Evangelical Racism.

Primary Sources:

(because we, too, exist in the world we’re describing)

This was our war on Christmas episode. You’re welcome, nerds. Have some images of us as kids:

Homework!

(that’s right, nerds, there’s always more to learn)

It’s the holidays! Even a couple of grinches like us believe firmly in a break. So your homework is:

Have fun! Support your local businesses! Stay hydrated! Wear a damn mask and stay distant!

Try not to impose your religion on others!

22nd episode in a pandemic? AS IF.