Ironic Pedagogy: Teaching Sacred Texts in an Academic Setting

Abstract

If one of COI’s charges is the supervision of academic borders between the academic units, it is surely a responsibility of any practitioner of the humanities to ensure that boundaries between disciplines are not only policed but dedicated as privileged sites of encounter and dialogue. In the spirit of just such a speculative exchange between Religious Studies and English Studies, one which may help extend and deepen the year-long series of debates here at OU on religion and society, I want to address here a few questions relating to the teaching of sacred texts in an academic setting.