Postcolonial Reflections: Challenges for Religious Studies1

Joy, Morny

doi:10.1163/157006801x00183

Cited by 27 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…al. 2016), we must take account of research exposing the colonialist, racist and hegemonic histories of the RE (Joy 2001;Nye 2019), all of which make questions of just representation pressing and inescapable.…”

Section: Pedagogical Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduction without Reductionism

Lewin¹

2021

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School and university teachers of Religious Studies (RS) are caught between presenting the irreducible complexity of their subject matter, and the practicalities of selection and simplification that pedagogy entails. The entanglements of culture, politics and ideology within RS, along with the colonialist and hegemonic histories of the subject, make questions of just representation especially acute. How can educators be inclusive and selective? The central strand of my argument concerns the “translation” between the academic study of religion in universities and religious education in schools. I argue that this translation necessarily involves “pedagogical reduction” – the selections and simplifications that teaching involves – and that we must carefully consider the basis upon which we form our pedagogical reductions. Establishing that basis depends on interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars of religion, scholars of education, and educators more generally. I argue that there is a conspicuous disconnection between critical scholarship in the scientific study of religion(s) and critical scholarship in the “educational sciences.” I justify the need for, and outline the nature of, dialogue between these scholarly communities through consideration of four interrelated pedagogical concepts that I offer as preliminary outlines towards the development of more robust and systematic criteria for developing a religious education that is simultaneously inclusive and selective.

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Section: Pedagogical Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduction without Reductionism

Lewin¹

2021

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“…Still, the lack of addressing diversities reflecting gender are certainly not only limited to religious education. Androcentrism, in combination with ethnocentric and hegemonic approaches have informed the broader academic study of religions, and in certain areas also continue within the discipline (Joy 2001;Alberts 2007;Sky 2007;Bøe and Kalvig 2020).…”

Section: Standard Representations Of Islam In Religious Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controversies, Complexities and Contexts: Teaching Islam through Internal Feminist Critique of the Religion

Bøe

2020

Religions

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In what ways can teaching Islam through controversial issues be useful in religious education? Can it serve to counter problems of representation of Islam, and what are the benefits and possible pitfalls of adopting such an approach? In this article, I will explore the use of Muslim internal feminist critique of conservative and patriarchal interpretations of women’s religious leadership in Islam as a controversial issues approach to teaching Islam in non-confessional religious education. The approach can be relevant for students in upper-secondary religious education, but also in teacher education. Building on secondary research documenting the problems of teaching Islam in non-confessional religious education in the Nordic countries as well as research on Muslim feminism spanning over a decade, this article investigates the didactic potentials and challenges that adopting the controversial issues approach may hold for teaching Islam. The main argument of this article is that the internal feminist debate on Islam provides an alternative entry to teaching Islam. It provides didactic resources and tools for understanding the discursive aspects of Islam, i.e., how Islam is conceived, interpreted, debated and practiced by Muslims, which in turn highlight power aspects and authority that are central to the production of religious knowledge. Consequently, the controversial issues approach may serve to counter certain “grand narratives” that seem to permeate current representations of Islam in religious education.

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“…Marshall (1970); Paul Almond (1988); David Chidester (1996;2014); Enrique Dussel (2004); Donald Lopez (1998); Richard King (1999), Urban (1999). It was not until the early twentieth century, that a significant number of books were published by women on the topic of postcolonialism and religion, e.g., Donaldson (2002); Donaldson and Kwok (2001); Dube (2002); Eaton and Lorentzen (2003); Kwok Pui-Lan ( 2005); Marcos (2006);and Joy (1995);2004;2012). In this connection, although their concern was not primarily that of religion, the influence of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987; and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1984), needs to be acknowledged.…”

Section: Postcolonialism and Globalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women’s Journeys in the Study of Religion

Joy

2018

JBASR

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In 1995, Professor Ursula King published an edited volume, Religion and Gender. This volume comprised a collection of essays that had been presented at the International Association of the History of Religions (IAHR) conference in Rome, 1990. As such, it marked a milestone: it was the first published volume that featured work undertaken solely by women in the history of the IAHR. In her own Introduction, Professor King drew attention to a number of important topics, such as ‘gender’, ‘postmodernism’, that were being debated at that time. The volume remains a testament to Professor King, and her dedication to, as well as support of women’s scholarship in the discipline on the Study of Religions, and to what was then called Comparative Religion. A subsequent volume, edited together with Tina Beattie, Gender, Religion and Diversity: Cross Cultural Perspectives (2004), addressed more complex issues that had emerged in the intervening years. This later volume provided another platform from which to explore not only developments in gender, but a number of other crucial topics, including postcolonialism and globalization. In this essay, I propose to follow the effects of such issues as addressed or acknowledged by Professor King in her various works, as well as to examine the further expansion and qualification of these topics in more recent years. This essay will thus explore issues that have had a formative and even decisive influence on the way that women scholars in the Study of Religions today approach the discipline. I will look to certain of my own essays that appeared in Professor King’s edited volumes as well as essays by other contemporary women scholars in order to illustrate these developments.

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Postcolonial Reflections: Challenges for Religious Studies1

Cited by 27 publications

References 21 publications

Reduction without Reductionism

Reduction without Reductionism

Controversies, Complexities and Contexts: Teaching Islam through Internal Feminist Critique of the Religion

Women’s Journeys in the Study of Religion

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