The Circled Square

Mushrooms for Enlightenment or Why Buddhism is Like Shrek: A Conversation about Teaching with Sangseraima Ujeed Episode 22 Recorded: June, 21 2022 Duration: 56:02 Description In this conversation with Sangseraima Ujeed, Assistant Professor of Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Michigan, she talks about teaching in a Public University as a practising Buddhist, the draw to teach and grow students...

Description     Trained in religion at Harvard, Kate Hartmann started her teaching job in Wyoming during the pandemic and has heartily embraced the challenges and possibilities of online and virtual modes of teaching. She also speaks eloquently about what her students in Wyoming need and want from her in person teaching about Buddhism. Founder of the new Buddhist Studies Online course platform, Ka...

Description José Cabezón is the Dalai Lama Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Among his many contributions to the field of Buddhist Studies, José served as the president of the American Academy of Religion in 2020 and his Presidential Address (published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion in September 2021) surveyed the study of Buddhism in...

Dr. Jan Willis discusses her lifetime of teaching Buddhism and Buddhist studies courses. She reflects on helping students broaden their horizons and find their true selves, just as she discovered the wider world of higher education after surviving childhood in the segregated south. In her teaching, she uses stories to connect students with the pivotal moments in history that shape our understandin...

In this episode Professor Todd Lewis discusses the importance of reaching students where they are, of unsettling their assumptions, and of teaching broad religious literacy in a world where much religious illiteracy prevails. He centers ritual and art in much of his teaching, wanting to balance the focus on elite and textual arts with popular practices and an awareness of the diversity of practiti...

Description This conversation with Susie Andrews (Mount Allison University) highlights how she uses creative and hands-on approaches to teaching Asian religions. Susie talks about the importance of building a culture of support and shared success in her teaching—and in academia more broadly. An inspired teacher who has her students build models of ancient Chinese burials using cardboard boxes and...

Description In this episode, Dr. Janet Gyatso discusses how she teaches her students about posthumanism and animal ethics in her courses on Buddhist Studies. She is the Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School.  Quotes “Part of what I'm trying to do is set aside all the mythology and ideology that we have and try to see an...

Description Marcus Evans teaches courses on Asian religions at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, exploring new perspectives and incorporating different voices that help students access and interpret old texts. His teaching integrates and combines classical Buddhist works and contrasts and compares these with the works of modern hip hop artists, helping students to see ways that art, litera...

Description Rima Vesely-Flad teaches at Warren Wilson College exploring the intersections of Buddhism, race, and gender. Her teaching is deeply entwined with her current research on Buddhist teachers of African descent in the United states, particularly in the Vipassana tradition. Buddhism as it was adopted in North America has reflected the racism and discriminatory ideologies of this society. Ri...

Description How do students learn and what do they value six months after a course? What do students get from embodied and experiential learning? In this episode, Sarah interviews five students who all took the same course about interdependence at the University of Toronto in the Fall of 2019. In these interviews, conducted well after the course and when the world has been plunged into a global pa...

Description  Gathering data about student expectations and experiences with new technology is essential to developing effective courses to be delivered online during the pandemic. In this interview we spoke with Daigengna Duoer, who taught an online course on Zen Buddhism at UC Santa Barbara this past summer. Daigengna repeatedly surveyed her students to evaluate their preferences and comfort with...

Description  Dr. Kerry Lucinda Brown is a professor of art history at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah Georgia and has a research focus on the religious arts of the Newar community of Nepal. In this episode we speak with Kerry about how she teaches Asian and Buddhist art topics in her context: that is, to students in a design college for whom the materials may be new and distant. Tea...

Description  Dr. Luther Obrock from the University of Toronto shares about teaching an undergraduate course on bodies and embodiment in early Indian Buddhist texts. He wants to use his course, a seminar, to help students understand how theories are not just modern constructions, but instead can also emerge from ancient religious texts. He leads his students through ways to mine data and informatio...

Description  In this episode, Dr. Rongdao Lai discusses her approach to teaching Buddhism as a living religion, and not only as a philosophy. As an ordained Buddhist nun in the Chinese tradition, she is intimately familiar with the contrasts between the academic study of religion and her own training in Buddhist practices at temples. She aspires to teach all of her students how to develop a critic...

Description  Dr. Frances Garrett from the University of Toronto discusses how she designs courses in creative ways that focus on developing student skills as well as sharing Buddhist studies content. She develops creative courses for her students, leading them through experiences like an immersive year-long embodied role playing game, or a seminar where the students collaborate on writing and publ...

Description In this interview, Sarah Richardson sits down with Dr. Ellen Katz, who has a unique lens as both a practising Social worker and a practising Buddhist, and a professor who marries these two experiences in and for her students. She discusses how she teaches her students about experiential and embodied learning, and meditation practices, in an undergraduate course on mindfulness and menta...

In this episode, Sarah Richardson speaks with Norman Farb , Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, about teaching contemplative science. Sarah and Norm talk about the benefits and drawbacks of secularizing Buddhist practices such as mindfulness, and about his use of exercises such as mindfulness and body scanning in his courses. Resources Mentioned Jon Kabat-Zi...

In this episode, Sarah Richardson talks with Wen-shing Chou, Associate Professor of Art History at Hunter College in New York, where she specializes in the art of China and the Himalaya. Sarah and Wen-shing discuss digital photography projects such as the Dunhuang Cave Foundation’s work with preserving and digitally archiving the contents of each cave, and they talk about taking students to see Bu...

In this episode, Sarah Richardson speaks with Abishek Amar , Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College. Abhishek specializes in the archaeological history of South Asian religions, and he is leading a digital research project, Sacred Centers in India , which examines material, culture and texts that reveal histories of the Hindu and Buddhist cities of Gaya and Bodhgaya. Sarah an...

In this episode, Sarah Richardson speaks with Natalie Avalos , now a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, but joining the department as an Assistant Professor in the 2020-21 academic year. Sarah and Natalie discuss Natalie’s unusual research specialization in both Tibetan Buddhism and Native American and Indigenous religions tr...

In this episode, Sarah Richardson speaks with Matt King , Associate Professor in Transnational Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies and Director of Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Sarah and Matt talk about why there is even such a thing as Buddhist studies, and why it matters to work toward decolonizing the classroom. They also discuss how his research informs...

In this episode, Sarah Richardson speaks with Vanessa Sasson, who teaches Religious Studies at Marianopolis College in Quebec, where she also co-teaches a popular course in which students travel to Nepal. Sarah and Vanessa talk about how Vanessa got interested in the study of Buddhism, about her new novel about Yasodhara, the Buddha’s wife, and about how writing a work of fiction has changed her a...