Winter 2016 Dean’s Seminar in the Craft of Teaching with Meira Kensky

"Building the Religion Major in the Era of the 'Death of the Humanities'"
This seminar will discuss the challenges of attracting students to the Religion Major in the contemporary climate. As students are inundated with talk of career preparation and are told over and over again that humanities majors only get jobs at coffee shops, departments worry about declining enrollments, consolidation, and justifying their programs to administrators, trustees, and even their faculty colleagues. Prof. Meira Kensky (PhD 2009; Associate Professor of Religion, Coe College) will talk about some of the strategies her department has employed in building a rigorous and flexible curriculum, recruiting and developing talented students, and acting as ambassadors to the college community at large for both the study of Religion and the Humanities in general.
The quarterly Dean's Craft of Teaching Seminar is the flagship seminar of the Craft of Teaching program, centered on issues of course design and institutional context.
Meira Z. Kensky is currently the Joseph E. McCabe Associate Professor of Religion. Kensky received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (New Testament) from the University of Chicago. Her first book, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature, was published by Mohr Siebeck in 2010, and was the inspiration for a conference on "The Divine Courtroom in Comparative Perspective" at Cordozo School of Law in New York. Currently, she is working on her second book for Mohr Siebeck, an examination of the figure of Timothy in Early Christian literature. Recent publications include articles on Romans 9-11, Tertullian of Carthage's Apologeticum, and the figure of Timothy in the Pauline and post-Pauline epistles. Kensky has lectured widely around the Chicago and Cedar Rapids areas, and gave the 29th Annual Stone Lectureship in Judaism at Augustana College, IL, last May. She was the recipient of Coe College's C. J. Lynch Outstanding Teacher Award in 2013.
The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy