AAR-SBL Conference

Wabash Center Activities at the Annual AAR-SBL Conference

Each year the Wabash Center hosts several workshops and sessions during the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL).  

2021 Sessions:

Wabash Center Virtual Session #1 – Thursday, November 18th, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM

Conversation with Authors: Becoming a White Antiracist

Boldly, these authors call for the deconstruction of white supremist structures designed to maintain and reward the truncated imaginations of white professors concerning the systemic hatreds and racist activities baked-into our world of scholarly pedagogy and beyond. This conversation with Stephen D. Brookfield and Mary E. Hess, authors of Becoming a White Antiracist, will delve into their struggle to develop this counter-cultural motif. The work of becoming a white antiracist is routinely met with institutional obstacles, collegial nay-sayers, or out-and-out rejection. We will dialogue about the author’s well-crafted approaches, strategies, and methods for creating an antiracist ecology in your school, workplace, community, and home. We will discuss ways to use this book as a resource to improve the formation of students, to correct the deformation of faculty, and to explore the needed identities to become a white antiracist.

Presider:
Nancy Lynne Westfield, The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion

Panelists:

• Stephen Brookfield
• Mary E. Hess, Luther Seminary

Wabash Center Virtual Session #2 – Thursday, November 18th, 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

Faculty Matters: Generative Formation of Early Career Colleagues

Destabilizing forces in higher education and theological education increase the pressure on early career colleagues. Kindling and rekindling the genuine voice of an early career scholar requires intention planning and a supportive environment. Many colleagues report that they experience isolation and feelings of being overwhelmed with little recompense or community structures to help them adapt and thrive. What is the price of belonging in a faculty? What kind of formation is necessary to assist early career faculty with living into their creativity imagination and courage? This is a conversation with seasoned mentors of early career faculty who will discuss what they wish early career faculty colleagues know and would be about to nurture their own generativity survival and persistence.

Panelists:

• Nancy Lynne Westfield, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
• Willie J. Jennings, Yale University
• Roger Nam, Emory University
• Jennifer Harvey, Drake University

Wabash Center Virtual Session #3 – Friday, November 19th 11:00 AM-12:00 PM

Life-Giving Teaching: When Classrooms Are Not Cloistered Away from The World

What if rather than teaching about the world as if it is a distant land to be grappled with after graduation we teach as if the world was our classroom? In order to create courses which are relevant meaningful and life-giving what would it mean to decenter the tried-and-true disciplinary tactics and instead place the joys sufferings perspectives and cultural meaning making apparatuses of students as the keystone of the course? Too much of our teaching is siloed away from the worlds and the realities from which our students leave and to which our students must return. This session is a discussion with colleagues who have a proven track record of seamlessly keeping the classroom connected to the world and vice versa i.e. praxis education. With intention and creativity these colleagues design courses which extend the classroom learning into connect with and operate in the world.

Panelists:

• Nancy Lynne Westfield, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
• Almeda Wright, Yale University
• Kenneth Ngwa
• Annie Lockhart-Gilroy, Phillips Theological Seminary