For Fall 2023 (9/27), Dr. Molly Wood will be offering a professional development seminar on teaching 9/11. Dr. Wood has worked extensively with the newest scholarship on the 9/11 terrorist attack itself, the commission report, and the way that the attack has shaped American society in the twenty-first century. Given that our students today are growing up in the post-9/11 world, without having been alive for the event, this seminar will help educators understand the newest work on the subject as well as how to teach a subject so sensitive to many of us in a way that enlightens the students without adding to their, or our, trauma.
Also in Fall 2023 (10/11), Drs. Travis Proctor and Matthew Hotham (Ball State) will offer Teaching Religious Literacy: How to Do It and Why it Matters. In June of 2023, Jeopardy! contestants briefly made headlines for their inability to answer ;a question about the Lord's Prayer. Social media commentators were stunned that some of the smartest people on television could whiff on such an easy question. Religious illiteracy, as some scholars call it, is not a new phenomenon, but it seems to have accelerated and taken on new significance in the past 50 years. In this session, we will learn about what religious literacy is and isn't, why it is critically important to our current public discourse, and how and why it should be incorporated in classes covering topics from music to economics to English. Finally, participants will leave the session with some key "shortcuts" to teaching religious literacy effectively, helping them successfully navigate the complex topic of religious diversity with nuance and confidence. The workshop will be a combination of lecture and interactive workshop-style sessions.
For Spring 2024 (3/13), Dr. Vanessa Plumly will offer Hidden Histories of World War II. Have you ever wondered what really happened to Black individuals living in, coming to, and returning from Europe around the time of the Second World War and how you can integrate this into your curriculum? If so, this workshop led by Dr. Vanessa Plumly in the Spring of 2023, will offer you the opportunity to explore the diverse experiences of Black people鈥檚 resistance to lived realities of oppression, especially African Americans and Black Germans, before, during, and after Germany鈥檚 Third Reich. The scope of WWII and the Holocaust is revealed in these histories and personal accounts which you will be able to engage in with Dr. Plumly.