Becoming Beholders: Cultivating Sacramental Imagination and Actions in College Classrooms

by Karen E. Eifler (Editor), Thomas M. Landy (Editor)

Overview

Catholic colleges and universities have long engaged in conversation about how to fulfill their mission in creative ways across the curriculum. The "sacramental vision" of Catholic higher education posits that God is made manifest in the study of all disciplines.

Becoming Beholders is the first book to share pedagogical strategies about how to do that. Twenty faculty—from many religious backgrounds, and in fields such as chemistry, economics, English, history, mathematics, sociology and theology—discuss ways that their teaching nourishes students' ability to find the transcendent in their studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814682968
Publisher:	Liturgical Press
Publication date:	04/28/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Karen E. Eifler is Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture at the University of Portland in Oregon. She is the author of A Month of Mondays: Spiritual Lessons from Catholic Classrooms (ACTA Publications, 2011) and been published in many journals including Catholic Education: a Journal of Inquiry and Practice, Transformational Education, Journal of Teacher Education and The Teaching Professor.
Thomas M. Landy, is Director of the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross and is currently engaged in an initiative at the McFarland Center to study Catholic life and practice around the globe. He is the editor and a contributor for the book, As Leaven for the World: Catholic Reflections on Faith, Vocation, and the Intellectual Life (Sheed and Ward, 2001). Landy is the 2009 recipient of the John Henry Newman Medal, which honors exemplars of Jesuit Catholic education, from Loyola College in Maryland.

Table of Contents

Preface Karen E. Eifler Thomas M. Landy ix

Part 1 The Sacramental Imagination as a Theological Perspective

Finding God in All Things: A Sacramental Worldview and Its Effects Michael J. Himes 3

Detectives of Grace in the Adventures of Scholarship James Corkery, SJ 18

Part 2 A Long, Loving Look at the Real

Practice Makes Reception: The Role of Contemplative Ritual in Approaching Art Joanna E. Ziegler 41

Radical Transcendence: Teaching Environmental Literature at a Catholic University Kimberly P. Bowers 56

You Are Here: Engagement, Spirituality, and Slow Teaching Anita Houck 70

Pauses Peter Alonzi 86

Part 3 Word and Sacrament

Rhetorics of Silence: A Pedagogy of Contemplation, Empathy, and Action Melissa A. Goldthwaite 103

Stumbling toward Grace: Meditations on Communion and Community in the Writing Classroom Ann E. Green 118

Looking into the Bible Michael Patella, OSB 129

Part 4 In Places of Struggle and Challenge

Catholic Social Teaching, Community-Based Learning, and the Sacramental Imagination Susan Crawford Sullivan 145

Solidarity through "Poverty and Politics" William Purcell Rev. William Lies, CSC 160

Exorcizing Taboos: Teaching End-of-Life Communication Michael R Pagano 176

Who Decides? Encountering Karma and Catastrophe in the Catholic Liberal Arts Michael Bathgate 191

Beholding the Eschaton: Transforming Self and World through the Study of World History Eric Cunningham 205

Part 5 Appreciating Where We Stand and What Others See

Shiver of Wonder: A Dialogue about Chemistry with Sister Angela Hoffman, OSB Karen E. Eifler 225

"Finding the Unfamiliar in Familiar Places": The Regis Community-Based Spanish/English Exchange Project; Journeys in Place Obdulia Castro Elizabeth Grassi 232

Dialogues of Discernment: Science for Social Justice Audrey A. Friedman 257

Cultivating Empathy and Mindfulness: Religious Praxis Angela Kim Harkins 275

This I Believe: Linking the Mathematical Axiomatic Method with Personal Belief Systems Stephanie Anne Salomone 289

Mutual Benefice: Helping Students Find God in a Research Methods Course Jonathan M. Bowman 305

About the Authors 314

Editorial Reviews

The editors write of the need for spaces where learning has meaning and purpose. Teachers don't create those kinds of spaces with their knowledge of the content or a sophisticated repertoire of pedagogical techniques. They do so with an imagination that sees what and how they teach in a life-enveloping context. That's what these essays showcase. You see how teaching looks when it's infused with a bit of divine perspective.
Maryellen Weimer, Professor Emeritus of Teaching and Learning, Penn State University

Becoming Beholders gives the reader amazingly practical advice on how to entice busy and normally reactive college students to change modes and instead learn to be deliberatively reflective. With examples from disciplines as diverse as abstract mathematics and chemistry to communication studies and literature and writing, I walked away with several ideas to transform my teaching and how to answer a question I've always struggled with: how can my ordinarily secular physics courses become so much more in light of the Catholic intellectual tradition? Becoming Beholders helped me conceive of new ways to help my physics students look at nature and the world and see, as Michael Himes, SJ, puts it so eloquently, the omnipresence of grace-"the love that undergirds all that exists."
Gintaras Duda, Associate Professor of Physics, Creighton University, 2013 Carnegie/CASE US Professor of the Year

EBOOK COMMENTARY

The editors write of the need for spaces where learning has meaning and purpose. Teachers don't create those kinds of spaces with their knowledge of the content or a sophisticated repertoire of pedagogical techniques. They do so with an imagination that sees what and how they teach in a life-enveloping context. That's what these essays showcase. You see how teaching looks when it's infused with a bit of divine perspective.
Maryellen Weimer, Professor Emeritus of Teaching and Learning, Penn State University






Becoming Beholders gives the reader amazingly practical advice on how to entice busy and normally reactive college students to change modes and instead learn to be deliberatively reflective. With examples from disciplines as diverse as abstract mathematics and chemistry to communication studies and literature and writing, I walked away with several ideas to transform my teaching and how to answer a question I've always struggled with: how can my ordinarily secular physics courses become so much more in light of the Catholic intellectual tradition? Becoming Beholders helped me conceive of new ways to help my physics students look at nature and the world and see, as Michael Himes, SJ, puts it so eloquently, the omnipresence of grace-"the love that undergirds all that exists."
Gintaras Duda, Associate Professor of Physics, Creighton University, 2013 Carnegie/CASE US Professor of the Year




This thought-provoking, insightful collection of twenty articles is directed toward teachers at Catholic colleges, but it is applicable to anyone who teaches in higher education and who comes to that task from a faith perspective. . . . The authors . . . discuss in detail activities in courses that they have taught that relate to the topic of the book. They often quote from students' journals or essays as a means of demonstrating student learning. They also describe activities that go on outside the classroom, such as trips to museums, personal reflection during the week, and service with nonprofit agencies as additional ways by which the sacramental imagination is cultivated.
Michael Willett Newheart, Reflective Teaching

From the Publisher