Adult Daughter (“AD”): Hi Mom, Alex said to tell you “hi.” Me: That’s nice. How is she? AD: How are “they?” Alex uses “they,” mom. Me: Oh right, sorry. I am having some trouble wrapping my head around using “they”… Read More ›
Education
Christmastime for the Self by John Erickson
We’ve all been there.
Sitting around the tree watching the kids open presents. Attempting to enjoy a holiday meal with extended and immediate family that you may or may not have traveled thousands of miles to see. Trying with every fiber of your being to not talk about the elephant, or red hat, in the room.
Spiritual Ideas, Existential and Eastern, in Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Lache S.
After my year of teaching high school students, I found a kinship with them in their frustrations, longing, apathy, hopelessness, and hope. Fortunately, we studied together Jean Paul Sartre, whom I want to get to know more intimately, but we,… Read More ›
On Belief and Action by Ivy Helman
My birthday was last Wednesday. Perhaps more than any other time of the year (yes, even more than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), the days and weeks leading up to my birthday are filled with personal reflection. Not that religious… Read More ›
Another Brick in the (Ivory) Wall by Natalie Weaver
I have recently read a couple of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the challenge of working in academia. One article lamented the paucity of tenure line positions and the great disappointment some ex-academics feel when they finally give… Read More ›
Activism Helps You Heal: #RESIST #NeverAgain by Marie Cartier
Here we are, as I write this, a week after the horrible shooting of 17 students and teachers in Parkland, Florida. And the beginnings of a new student led movement: #NeverAgain—never another school massacre like what happened in Florida. Today,… Read More ›
Is God Breathing? by Karen Leslie Hernandez
Another mass shooting. Syria. #MeToo. Hunger. Animal extinction. Iraq. Climate change. Deportation. Slavery. Central African Republic. Hate crimes. Rape. Animal cruelty. Oppression. Accidental nuclear war alerts. Homeless encampments. “Illegal immigrants.” Afghanistan. More mass shootings. Sex robots. Trafficking. Russian bots. Racism…. Read More ›
On Snakes by Ivy Helman
In the ancient world, snakes represented fertility, creativity, rebirth, wisdom and, even, death. They were often closely connected to female goddesses, priestesses and powerful human females who were the embodiment of such powers. For example, there is the Minoan goddess/priestess… Read More ›
Questions that Matter: What is Feminism? by Elise M. Edwards
It certainly is a busy time of year for me, but I’m fortunate that many of the events I am participating in offer a chance to share what is important to me. Next week, I’ll be speaking to a group… Read More ›
Teachers by Valentina Khan
I recently told my 4-year-old son the following, “son, I pray you fall in love with someone you call your best friend. I pray you both never cross the line and say mean and terrible things to each other, I… Read More ›
#MeToo and the Idolatry Trap by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee
Really – everywhere we look – there are dead white guys. National holiday? Most likely in honor of a dead white guy. Statue on a green? Founder of a major Christian denomination? Dead white guy. Classic literature, painting, play, music… Read More ›
Religious Studies is Too [?] for Education by Lache S.
Since I am teaching in a charter high school this year, this is the level of education I am speaking about. I teach college English, and often craft my writing classes in thematic ways. This semester, I did units on… Read More ›
Empowering Toys and the Problem of Class Divisions by Katie M. Deaver
I recently noticed that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about financial security, the way class systems work in the United States context, and how these types of realities inform my feminism. Part of this is no doubt… Read More ›
What I Believe (Post-2016) by John Erickson
Ever since the election of You-Know-Who, I have been doing a lot of creative writing.
Gaining Perspective by Natalie Weaver
I don’t know if I could be a deep-sea welder. I don’t know what the risks of lethal electrocution, broken limbs, or the bends would be. I suspect it can be a dangerous occupation, like operating heavy equipment on good… Read More ›
What Could ‘Masculinity’ Mean in 2017? by Meghana Bahar
PART II of II – see PART I here. Last year, the leader of the (un)Free World was elected by ‘right choice’, much to the collective dismay of liberal leftists, a huge proportion of people of colour, progressive educationists, environmental… Read More ›
What Could ‘Masculinity’ Mean in 2017? by Meghana Bahar
There have been so many times I have seen a man wanting to weep but instead, Beat his heart until it was unconscious. — ‘Masculine’, Nayyirah Waheed PART I of II There have been many times when I have… Read More ›
It’s About More Than Just The Ariana Grande Concert by Karen Leslie Hernandez
Manchester. It’s not just about this one act of violence. It is horrific, there is no doubt, and I am in no way belittling this act of terror, but, I am always perplexed when these things happen, and how it… Read More ›
Remembering Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Life and Legacy: Champion of Universal, and Non-Human Rights November 12, 1648/51 – April 17, 1695 by Theresa A. Yugar
She studies, and disputes, and teaches, and thus she serves her Faith; for how could God, who gave her reason, want her ignorant? —Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Villancico, or, “Carol”, in celebration of St. Catherine of Alexandria (1692)… Read More ›
Coeducation and the Virtue Gap by Race MoChridhe
Late last year, Nancy Weiss Malkiel described how coeducation triumphed in the universities not out of a desire to include female students, but out of a desire to appeal to the changing tastes and expectations of male ones. Coming from… Read More ›
What is the Most Dangerous Breed? by Karen Leslie Hernandez
As I wrote in November, I am currently working at the San Francisco SPCA. I took the job to bring something different in to my life as I do the heavy work involved with my Doctor of Ministry. I LOVE… Read More ›
Contemplative Education: A Pedagogical Approach of Compassion by Lache S.
Even though I encountered wisdom literature when specializing in Hinduism during my Religious Studies doctoral program, through reading the works of Christian female mystics and the liberation theologies of feminist spiritual guides, it took a book I never encountered in… Read More ›
A Letter to Those I’ve Lost by John Erickson
Out of all of these things, the one thing that has kept coming to my mind is G-d. What is he (or she) thinking? I feel like I’m back in one of my Old Testament classes discussing the harsh and cruel G-d that thrust so many horrible things onto their believers. Maybe, the worst part about the election isn’t Donald Trump, but it is the realization that G-d may be dead after all.
Intellectual Circles, Authenticity, Legibility, and Working Class Roots by Christy Croft
In my other writing for Feminism and Religion, I’ve discussed how a key focus of my spiritual path involves dancing within the tension of opposites, finding ways to move mindfully and freely inside the orbit of sacred circularities in which… Read More ›
The End is Nigh by John Erickson
How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.
I’m Stumped by Karen Leslie Hernandez
I’m stumped. We’ve all seen and heard what Donald Trump has said in the public sphere… “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, I’d be dating her.” “… a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” “When Mexico sends… Read More ›
Education as Resistance by Dawn Morais Webster
Ivy Helman’s recent commentary (((Israel))) criticizes what she sees as “a new form of anti-Semitism” from organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace in their advocacy of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement. So I begin this account of… Read More ›
Parenting with the ‘Same Words’ by Sara Frykenberg
Teaching and talking with my daughter, I find myself revisiting the subtle and not so subtle kyriarchial language in my own upbringing in ways that I do not when speaking to other adults with my very intentional and well-trained adult language. Parenting sometimes feels like a trip back in time where I remember and more readily feel my joy of singing particular songs or reading particular stories, simultaneously feeling my inner feminist and adult self cringe at the messages in too many of these stories.
After the Body, the Land by Kate Brunner
After we learn to let our bodies tell our stories, after we embrace somatic spirituality, after we become one with these bodies that move us to action, that power the physical acts that manifest our spiritual work as feminists, what… Read More ›
STEM and Sexism: Pedagogical Responses to “Chilly Climates” by Sara Frykenberg
Another way to put this: there is nothing inherently competitive about the study of mathematics. The classroom is competitive in order to create a particular kind of graduate—one who engages in a particular [dominant] culture. Liberative pedagogy challenges the ways that classrooms are run in order to challenge the dominant culture.
