ReligionWise

Distinguishing the Academy From the Temple - Tom Robinson and Hillary Rodrigues

July 15, 2022 Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding Season 1 Episode 11
ReligionWise
Distinguishing the Academy From the Temple - Tom Robinson and Hillary Rodrigues
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of ReligionWise, we talk with Tom Robinson and Hillary Rodrigues, two professors at the University of Lethbridge who direct the Robinest project, a website that provides digital resources for the academic study of religion. In this conversation we talk about these resources, and more generally about dispelling misconceptions of the academic study of religion in contemporary higher education and public discourse.

Show notes:

Chip Gruen:

Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where we feature educators, researchers and other professionals discussing topics on religion and their relevance to the public conversation. My name is Chip Gruen. I'm the Director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding at Muhlenberg College, and I will be the host for this podcast. In today's episode, we talked to Tom Robinson and Hillary Rodrigues, two professors from the University of Lethbridge in Canada. They are the founders and directors of a project called Robinest that can be found at robinest.org. On this website, they not only provide digital textbooks, but also materials that are intended to draw students to the academic study of religion. These resources, particularly the posters, are free to use. These posters are both witty and poignant. And what first interested me in the Robinest project. In our conversation today, we talk about drawing students to the discipline, attracting interest in the academic study of religion, and differentiating between the teaching of theology and the academic study of religion, I would encourage all of you to take a look at robinest.org. and see the ways that they're trying to enhance public discourse on religion, through the building of materials and sharing them with the community. As the purpose of ReligionWise is to think about and enhance public conversation on religion, it was really great to sit down and talk with Tom and Hillary, who are in many ways kindred spirits, in their view of the discipline, and their feeling of responsibility of sharing that discipline with the world outside of higher education. Tom and Hillary welcome to ReligionWise.

Tom Robinson:

Thanks.

Hillary Rodrigues:

Hi, Chip.

Chip Gruen:

So before we start talking about the project itself, I'm always interested in collaborations and how collaborations come about. So can you tell me a little bit about how you all both started working together and, and, and then also how you started thinking about this project together?

Tom Robinson:

I suppose our story should be somewhat similar. I was teaching at the University of Lethbridge, and seven years after I started there, we hired Hillary. And it was we both did our PhDs at McMaster University. And so we had a sense of somewhat common background. And at McMaster, if you did a major in a Western tradition, you had to do a minor in the East, I had done mine in the West. So I did a minor in the East, and Hillary did major in the last, and then a minor, major in the East, and then a minor in the West. So we had, we already started with a kind of a common background. And then we did a team teaching course of the first year religious studies course. And it was a natural fit for us. We had fun with it, we had a similar kind of approach. And it was just a kind of a natural, healthy relationship. Now, here's your his, Hillary's story, which may be different.

Hillary Rodrigues:

You know, there was a time that each of us taught all of the world religions course that is Eastern and Western and this background that we had enabled us to do that, because we had a level of expertise in an area in areas that were, let's say, less than, you know, our areas of specialization. But when we started team teaching, we started taking over, you know, Western ,Tom would do Western I would do with the Eastern traditions and so on. And we also found that the textbooks that we were attempting to use, were somewhat falling a bit short. So part of what motivated the project of working on a textbook together was to try to find something suitable for our students. I mean, that's always been the motivation to kind of try and put together textbook materials.

Chip Gruen:

So what you're saying actually sounds fairly familiar to me. When I did my work at the University of Pennsylvania, it was similar where I was majoring in Christianity, ancient Christianity, actually, and then had to did a minor was happy to do a minor in Daoism. So that seems similar but so I'm curious, because I know I've been in public universities, large private universities now I'm at a small liberal arts college. What is the context of Lethbridge? How would you describe the university for people who don't know? And how is the study of religion situated in that context?

Hillary Rodrigues:

Well, we are a relatively small university. I think our enrollment now is somewhere around 8,000 students, primarily undergraduate, but we've had a burgeoning graduate program for the last 10 or 15 years. I mean, when Tom and I got here there were 4,000 students. The population the students are really culled from rural areas around Southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, southern British Columbia. So Lethbridge itself is a city of about 100,000 people. Most of these students do not have much exposure to world religions. It's not a very multicultural city, although it has been growing and changing. So in general, our demographic of students are exposed to Christianity, primarily, Judeo Christian culture. As a prof who teaches the Eastern traditions I'm, I'm especially aware of that lack of knowledge. But at the same time, I find that our students are highly interested in learning about other cultures. So where what they lack in background, they make up for in enthusiasm. And that, for me has been particularly rewarding. Tom, I don't know what you want to add to that.

Tom Robinson:

There is a religious texture to the area. There's a heavy Mormon population, not so much in the city, but just south of the city. And in the towns. The first Mormon temple outside of the states, was built in Cardston, just just five miles or so from the Montana border. So there's that influence. And there's a heavy Dutch Reformed influence. There is all the mainstream traditions. There is a large Japanese community in Lethbridge that comes from World War II and internment camps. So there's a mixed, mixed bag, but some strong religious sensibilities in the area.

Chip Gruen:

So I know my interest, and we're sort of starting to come up on this my interest in thinking about, like, sort of metacognitively thinking about how we study religion, which I think to a large extent, is what the Robinest project seems to be about to me. But that that really arose in me out of a little bit of a frustration between, you know, misconceptions about, about studying religion and practicing religion or between theology and religious studies, it seems to me like there is something similar at your, in your work. So you say, on the one hand, the project sort of rose out of creating materials for your students. But clearly, given the some of the promotional materials that you're sharing, freely, I might add, that there's something else going on here, there's some other impetus rather than just reaching out to students in your classroom. Um, can you talk a little bit about that and how you became interested in these broader issues?

Tom Robinson:

I think all religious studies professors know that there's going to be some misunderstanding about the academic study of religion, from students who happen to, for whatever reason, enroll in a religious studies course. And that's something we all prepare for in trying to make clear, what motivated me, particularly to do those posters, to kind of challenge misconceptions about religious studies is that one day I walked into a classroom, and the prof. before me, was just picking up final exam papers. So I knew he hadn't given a lecture. So I said to him, Well, it looks like you haven't given a lecture today. Why don't you stay and give a lecture to my class? And he said, Oh, I couldn't do that. I'm not religious. And I said to him, he was a biology prof. I said to him, do you have to be a frog to teach biology? And you could see it as something clicked, that he could understand a bit of a difference, but the reality was that most profs outside of Religious Studies, unless maybe they were in sociology or anthropology, didn't understand what we did, what religious studies was about how you separated the priest from the professor, the temple from the academy. And so I was motivated to do these posters. And then all the members of the religious studies department began to throw me ideas to work on. And we had about 50 posters, and we're making them free and our idea book, and they work, well post them up, see what the response is. It they really hit a nerve with some people, what's this? And it's a significant challenge to their way of thinking. And so that was a start for us, trying to produce good material.

Chip Gruen:

Tom, I think we were separated at birth, because I often say some of my favorite ornithologists are not birds. So it's very similar to your, your example.

Tom Robinson:

If we were separated at birth, then we're triplets because I'm a twin.

Chip Gruen:

So and how long ago was this, that you started sort of making this foray into sharing these materials more publicly?

Tom Robinson:

Oh, I retired about five years ago. And so I guess, the trying to get these various products in shape, that they would be useful to a wide range of professors in the discipline. I suppose we started about five years or years ago on that, though, we were using materials that we had developed throughout our career.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah.

Hillary Rodrigues:

Yeah, if I could just jump in. I mean, Tom, and I and other members of our department had collaborated with writing the World Religions book, and Tom is sort of the he's sort of both the creative and tech brains behind our project and does everything in that regard. And for that early World Religions, book, Tom had created a CD ROM, if you remember those things that went along with the book that had a question database and had photographs and so on. So this idea of moving in the direction of implementing some kind of digital technological dimension to regular textbooks, had been there for decades, I would say, then, eventually, the use of CD ROMs, and so on, became passe. And it was taken away. And we were sort of toying with the idea of constructing materials, again, for the benefit of students. Kind of taking the sum total of what we had learned over decades of teaching world religions, and offering it to, to professors and students, kind of at a reasonable cost, and also making use of all the materials we have gathered over over decades of teaching. And we thought the best way to do this was to do it digitally. That was a bit of a jump, as opposed to doing it in the more conventional format. So our books have taken on this notion of, you know, the value of digital media and what are two of the doors that it opens up to people. Price is one of the things you can really keep prices down. You can have marvelous visuals, you can have sound files, and so on, as you well know, doing this podcast.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, I actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, every year when I go and look for textbooks for my courses, I am just astounded at the expense of some of these things. I had, you know, a very thin I mean, a half inch thin introduction to Christianity that was running my students well over $100 until I just couldn't stomach it anymore. So we'll put a link to your all's resources in in our show notes today. But it should be noted that that the different texts that you have and there are several there, there's what Eastern religions, Western religions, Christianity, Judaism, Hindu, East Asian religions,so it's a wide variety.

Tom Robinson:

...chapters, plus the Eastern and Western plus some readers.

Chip Gruen:

Yes, yeah. And the readers are the primary sources as well, but that they all run for 9.99 Canadian, right rather than these triple digit amounts that we get in, you know, from publishers. So I don't know if there's a question there other than just to congratulate you because, you know, affordable resources are so difficult now, particularly when we're trying to democratize, right? The availability of these things.

Tom Robinson:

Well, that was always our concern when for any of our courses to keep the cost of text required text down. It's somewhat of a scandal in the pricing of academic textbooks, I think.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah.

Tom Robinson:

But that's another matter.

Chip Gruen:

It is, it is. And I think we should just say that even if a textbook is very, very expensive through a publisher, the authors of that textbook are not getting the lion's share of that as well. So it's,

Tom Robinson:

No, no.

Chip Gruen:

It's an industry to itself. Yes.

Tom Robinson:

Yeah.

Chip Gruen:

So, um, Hillary wanted to come back to for a minute, because Tom was talking about, you know, misconceptions. And I know, being somebody who studies Christianity, you know, I got on campus here at Muhlenberg 15 years ago, and the one ran into one of the faculty members, and he says, Oh, are you the new theologian? And and I, you know, was, as you say, Tom was ready for the question and answered, No, no, that's not me at all. Here, I'll tell you who I am exactly. But that he clearly was thinking of me when he asked the question, he knew somebody had been hired to study Christianity and assumed it was a theologian. So Hillary, my question to you is, you know, given that you study different, you know, a different body of materials that you're fundamentally grounded in studying the traditions in the East, how does that play differently for you than, say, somebody who, who comes at Christianity and Judaism? Who's very often imagined to be a rabbi or a priest or a pastor or something?

Hillary Rodrigues:

That's a, Yeah, that's a great question. I think to some extent, people still make the assumption that the person who teaches, you know, Eastern religion belongs to that faith. To some extent, I would say students are somewhat less concerned and almost want the person who teaches it to belong to that tradition. I almost have to disabuse them from that orientation. So while there's a while there's sometimes a bit of there's, there's almost a sense that they'll get the real, the real goods, if they are taught about that tradition by an insider to the tradition. So there is a certain kind of a battle to sort of point out that look, even though we're studying religions that are, you are less familiar with, you still need to have critical distance. Sympathy in terms of being empathetic to the understanding of the religion, but not such to such a degree, that you lose the kind of scholarly distance that I'd like to inculcate in students when it comes to looking at those Eastern traditions. So there's a, there's this, this this odd attitude that students will sometimes take, which kind of others these traditions in a way that is not, not, let's say, academically appropriate for what our, our discipline is trying to develop and inculcate in students, I would often teach the theory and method course, that's sort of the capstone course, in religious studies, and became, you know, highly sensitized, again, to the lack of materials that for sort of a one, a one semester, seminar course. So we started to look again, at ways in which we could sort of begin to teach the doing of Religious Studies alongside the acquisition of, of content. For Eastern traditions, and to get back to your question, there's a lot of new content there, gods and myths and Hinduism, there are metaphysical ideas, and Buddhism and so on. The content itself is very appealing. But one wants to sort of teach an approach to studying that in the same way that one would study Christianity academically. So there's this sort of this double whammy that you have teaching the Eastern religions, which is teaching content with which students are unfamiliar, as well as having the critical distance to study them with the quality of objectivity.

Tom Robinson:

And there's always some students who are on a quest to I guess, maybe everyone is on some sort of quest, but they're they see in this, coming to religious studies as a path toward at least finding themselves or whatever. And, and again, we're not going to be that helpful in in getting them to their goal. As a matter of fact, we may even detour them.

Chip Gruen:

Actually, what again, what we say sounds sounds very familiar when we were doing the mission statement for the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding we, it's a two prong thing on the one hand literacy, right, knowing the myths, the rituals, the stories, right the metaphysics, etc. But then on the other hand, modeling and thinking about what a sophisticated academic conversation about religion looks like, which I think is a way of saying theory and method without, without saying, saying, theory and method. Another thing that I'm interested in, you say that you've been doing this work together for for decades, that you built this body of materials, you took it upon yourselves, not too many years ago to start sharing this to create the Robinest project itself, Have you found that, either in your own department or in the field, your approach, this approach that is, on the one hand comparative, on the other hand, rooted in these theoretical questions? has this become either more or less au courant? Is this something that you feel when you have new people in the department that they're absolutely gung ho, to jump on board? Or have you felt like the field has shifted somewhat?

Hillary Rodrigues:

If I've got your question right, Chip, it's, I mean, our texts have a, you know, they have a certain innovative quality about them in terms of appeal, and so on. But in certain other ways, they are fairly, you could say, standard approaches to the presentation of religion. We do, we do sort of break things up into history and beliefs and practices and so on. Embedded in the way we write the material is a certain, let's say, desire to convey theoretical issues, complexities within religion, and so on. But we don't make that front and center. A lot of people who come to the academy now sometimes want to bring to their students, the newest theoretical approach to problematize religion as a category to talk about all of the different variations that exist within Christianity or Hinduism. There are Hinduism's and Christianity's and so on. We have found that from years of teaching decades of teaching, that the all of this is important at the same time, it can be terribly confusing to students. So trying to find that sweet spot between informing and at the same time, not neglecting that which is au courant is, is part of what we've been struggling to do. And perhaps we've, we, we err on the side of wanting to present material at the foundational level, because we feel that students need to have like knowledge at their disposal, before they can theorize and talk in a more sophisticated way about the complexities of, of religions and their variations. So as far as new people coming on and, and seizing onto these texts, it's hard to say. You could say that we even among our colleagues, there they are of two minds about it. They sometimes have to teach the world religions course, for a few years before they discover the value of going back to sort of, you know, nuts and bolts to some extent in the presentation of material.

Tom Robinson:

And given the poor market in religious studies for, for new profs, there are very few new profs in any department unless they're sessionals, but that's another matter.

Chip Gruen:

We could do a whole series on another matter, I think.

Tom Robinson:

What we tried to do with the resources that we produced, we know they won't work for everyone. But there there's such diversity there that I think most people will find something that can be useful in their own presentation.

Chip Gruen:

So I'm thinking about, you know, approaches. And and I'm very, admire you very much for your very much student centered approach to this, but I think we're in the process of thinking about our curriculum too. And, you know, on the one hand, you want to build a major that, you know, can lead people to very good, complicated expertise level understandings. But I would guess that you're in the same boat that we are that you might get students for one semester, you know, fulfilling a general ac-academic requirement, or they just have other fish to fry as, as everybody does. And so reaching those students with things that are useful to them and choosing to hit the content first, rather than, as you say, the more sort of complicated and oftentimes confusing methodological work, how many students do you have that come to you and, and sort of latch on and continue on? And how much is it a one semester, get in them as much as you can project?

Tom Robinson:

I think our 1000 course, is a course where we capture people. They don't come. because they really want to take Religious Studies 1000, they come because it fits their schedule, or somebody's told them, oh, this is a good course, or what, or the girlfriend's in the class and they want to be with her. All those factors. But we know that we have to win them. In that class, we teach about 500 first year students each year. So we have a good core, the Deans notice that this is where their money is. So that's helpful to religious studies as a department, but we have to capture their interest. And so we do a little bit of entertaining, right at first. And maybe maybe I should say what we have done. The two of us appear for the first lecture. And I would say, Good afternoon class. I'm Professor Rodrigues. And Hillary would turn to me and whisper something in my ear. And I'd say, Oh, I'm sorry, mistaken. I'm Professor Robinson, this is Professor Rodrigues. We've taught this course so long together as team teachers, that we sometimes get confused about our own identity. So they're this for many of them as a first class they've had, and they just kind of don't know what to do with that. Do they laugh? What's going on? And we're so and then I usually make the comment. Now half, I'll take the first half of this course, halfway through the semester, Professor Rodrigues will come in. Now pay special attention to the syllabus and note the change, because you might get not notice when Professor Rodrigues comes in. because we're often mistaken for twins. Well, impossible. I'm short, Hillary's tall, brown pink, bald, balding. So by that time, there's a bit of humor, they're prepared to laugh. And now not the whole class becomes humor, but we capture them from day one. Oh, these guys are human. They're a little funny. And because we don't want them to drop out after the first day, because many students come, oh, will this work for me? Then they leave. So it's really you want to catch them right off. And I think that's been effective for us.

Hillary Rodrigues:

Right? If I can jump in. It is quite remarkable that students come in too early. I mean, we have a liberal education policy at or, let's say, philosophy at the University of Lethbridge. And there are liberal education requirements that students have to take. So if they're a major in chemistry, and so on, they still have to take some courses in the humanities and the social sciences. That's often why they end up taking a religious studies course. As Tom said, if we're able to turn them on to religion, the study of religion, activate that curiosity. Then they will sign up for our second, third and fourth year courses. Some actually have switched majors and become religious studies majors, though that's really not by any means our bread and butter as you said, the vast majority will take one religious studies course and that's it. But we are always we feel that there's a sense of success if we've managed to lure them into large numbers taking second and third year courses. And we find that we are effective at doing that if you have the right materials, if your delivery is appealing and interesting and stimulating mentally to the students, they find that they are actually learning something of value. You can you can draw them in because they do have courses that they can choose outside of their major. And let's face it religious studies, is for the most part, a kind of a service course, there are these a service courses for students who are majoring in something else, and who are broadening their, their their education.

Chip Gruen:

So one of the things that I really feel privileged to do is, you know, having conversations like this reaching out to people from other colleges, universities from from, frankly, you know, across the country around the world. And I'm always astounded at the really interesting work that people are doing, not only in publishing, but but also in, like the Robinest project. And it is often the case that there are really great people doing really great things that are unheralded, and I'm interested in your project because it stands up and says, Hey, we are doing this work, we want to share this work. It's at, it's either free or low cost. You know, and you've done mailings, like I said earlier, you know, I got a cold, cold mailing from you and that's how I learned about you. Can you talk a little bit about how you've been received, you know, either locally in Lethbridge or around the country around the world, how the materials that you've sought to share have been received, and what are some indicators of your success?

Tom Robinson:

Well, I think it's clear that we're not winning any prizes in marketing, that's not our skill. And it takes persistence. So we're at the beginning of, of putting material out that advertises the product and learning how to do that. So we're not, let's just say, we're not good at marketing. And a lot of profs are like that, right? They're, they're, they're good at their scholarship, but they're not good at marketing it. And so, but we're proud of our product, and we're learning how to make ourselves known. But it's a learning process for sure.

Hillary Rodrigues:

There is a tendency for professors when selecting materials for their courses to turn to the well known publisher. And even those guys find, I mean they've got a huge machine of agents that sort of show up at your door talking about the newest book, and so on. We don't have any of that infrastructure. This project Robinest is really Tom, and me and a few other people we've enlisted to help us. So putting the word out and so on is important. And, as Tom mentioned, we're not experts at doing it. We've got students, we've had students who have gone on to become professors themselves. And they will often turn to our materials having used our materials before they find that they're useful. Others come upon them as you did from from things like these cold mailings, and so on. That's our way of trying to get the word out. And we really appreciate this podcast, for instance, because it will make more people aware of what's out there. Those who have used it who've written back and generally very favorably, because they see the impact that it has on their students. And I mean, this is what we this is where we've come from, we've come from a place of wanting to be effective at teaching this material and are constantly seeking out new ways to try to make the material engaging and have students go to the text want to flip it open and look through it. Remember certain key aspects you know, perhaps we'll have a chance to talk a little bit about some of those innovative approaches we've used for for pedagogy, but that's what ultimately is the source of success is the response that it has from students its effectiveness at teaching.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, I'd love to follow up on that, right now actually about about innovative pedagogy about some of the things that you've really sought to incorporate into these, you know, into these works. And as Tom, as you alerted, alluded to earlier, you know, the digital the, the digital platform allows so much more than just a book off the shelf can do. So, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about, about how you're thinking about, you know, not only using the technology, but using the platform of the Robinest project to, to inform pedagogies on the academic study of religion as well.

Tom Robinson:

Oh, I think as we work together, it's an enjoyable process for us. And there's a certain creativity in working with somebody else. So there, there is just kind of an energy that we get from working on the project, and discovering a new way to do something, we've spent quite a bit of time in finding how to make visual, a concept and put it in some sort of graph or illustration. So that the student can remember the image, the graph, that's, that's in their memory, in a way that words sometimes can slide out. So we've done quite a bit of that. And we've been pleased with how, how effective they they are, what, but we're disappointed that we didn't do this when we first started teaching, you know. So we have a lot of things like that. We use color. For each tradition, there's a distinctive color. So if they can remember the color of the image they know what tradition it is. We've used things like postage stamps, the image from a postage stamp to capture an event that what how do you capture an event like the any war or any anything like that, it would be almost impossible to capture, we think of videos or something, but you can capture it in a stamp. Because the stamp gives the artist a inch by two space to actually put a historical event on in that space. And so we view the stamps in, in our books, and our PowerPoint slides. And we find them, they can be quite effective, because there's an image with this event that would otherwise kind of float away. So we've used various things like that. Plus, in addition to the text, the standard flow of the text, oh, we've found little tidbits of information that we can put in a sidebar, with an illustration. For example, on the Danube in Budapest, there's about 40 pairs of iron shoes. It's a display, a Holocaust display, commemorating the execution of Jews who were brought to the Danube told to take off their shoes, because shoes were valuable toward the end of World War II, shot, and their bodies dumped into the Danube. So we have an image of two of these iron shoes. Well, when you're looking through a religious studies textbook, and you'll see iron shoes, What's going on here? And then there's a little blurb explaining that. Well, that's a bit of knowledge, that's forever there's. So we often have it in a textbook or bring it to the PowerPoint slides. So we're looking for those little things that whatever they leave with, there's certain things they will never forget. So various things like that, that kind of add to the whole experience

Hillary Rodrigues:

On this on this collaborative business. I'd like to give you an example. So there is in Tibetan Buddhism, there's a very striking painting that's often found on tankas or monastery walls. It's called the Bhavachakra, it's the the wheel of existence or life. And it sort of has, you know the realms of the various the gods and the human and animal and the hellish realms and so on at the center. And around it there are 12 categories that deal with perception leading to desire or leading to grasping and kind of the rebirth of the psychological self. Well the images that are used in the Tibetan Bhavachakra are sometimes appealing, but sometimes they're kind of remote because they're culturally tied to Tibetan culture. So Tom and I were like, This Bhavachakra is very interesting, but how could we work it in such a way that our students might actually be able to understand it? And I would say, Well, I wonder if you can, like how do we convey the notion of grasping, and, and so on. And Tom would, of course, look at various icons that he had, together, collaboratively, we'd come up with a way. So we've created like, a Bhavachakra, in that one page on, on, on Buddhism, that's a kind of a nouveau representation of this classical Tibetan, symbolic painting and diagram that was designed as a teaching tool, but we've made it a teaching tool for our students who utilize the text. And that's found in a lot of different places, you know, with the seven deadly sins, or you know, the stages of life, and so on, and so forth. So we're constantly working that way with each other to find innovative and interesting ways of getting ideas across.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, when you think about what we're trained to do, and what we're not trained to do. I mean, I always joke that sort of 80% of the life of a professor is things that we were never actually trained to do. And as you talk about the challenges of creating a textbook for undergraduates or creating these visuals for undergraduates, I mean, I would say that, you know, if we're writing a scholarly article, like, to a large degree, we're working against that, right, you're working against that you're working with that sentence that might have three dependent clauses on it, because you're wanting to sort of, you know, show the complexity of the of, of what's going on in here, it becomes a matter of working reverse of distilling, becoming memorable, you know, having something that wedges in somebody's brain, you know, rather than rather than the opposite, that is that is all

Tom Robinson:

And there's a certain satisfaction when you about the nuance. know you've scored, that this actually works. And so we we've had a great time, putting these things together, just delighted that some of our discoveries, quite surprised that just one little tweak with something, and everything falls into place. Not everything there have been disasters.

Hillary Rodrigues:

So for instance, just quite recently, Tom thought of the idea of when there was like we had a photograph of something to illustrate, you know, so there's bodies being cremated on the Ganges, let's say, so you've got the cremation grounds in India. Well, to have a small little section that shows a map of India, where Banaras is located. Right on the photograph, I mean, this is something that you've been implementing Tom on your so when students see the photograph, they instantly can actually see where this photograph occurs, because we love maps. And we think that, you know, it's a, it's a great idea to teach geography of the world and where these these things are, take place. Just that little thing, of course, it takes a lot of work to do. But I find it an incredibly valuable addition to the simple photograph, because it has now raised it to another level where just the visual can convey to students where it is actually situated geographically.

Tom Robinson:

And also, something that is effective to ground something, historically, is that in our history section of each discipline, of each tradition, we have little bars that run across the page that gives a chronological sketch of major events, so that the student when reading, can just drop their eyes down to this. And, and the particular point in the chart, where this fits, we will have highlighted in the color of that tradition. So little things like that, that. Without effort, they're getting some understanding of geography and of history. A sly way to do it.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, so it seems like orientation is really important to you, right? Orienting the student in what they're seeing. You know, contextualizing both in space and time.

Hillary Rodrigues:

You know, the point you raised before, earlier Chip, is so important. The crafting of textbooks is so different from our typical academic writing. And to be effective. I mean, I've written a book on Hinduism. And what got me interested in the e-stuff is that I was asked to write a book on Hinduism and a persons siad We're thinking of doing a digital book, this was way back. So almost 10 years ago. They were the people who did one of the first academic journals, the Journal of Buddhist Studies, as a digital journal, and those days digital journal was viewed with some suspicion and so on about quality, etc. So when he said, Oh, could you write a book, a digital textbook on Hinduism, I thought, What? No, I, you know, but then as I gave it thought, I realized what the potential was for it. And I thought, well, I'll just just bang out a textbook fairly easily only to discover that writing a book on a tradition is a huge challenge, one that typically goes relatively, not as acknowledged as it ought to be in academic circles, because, nevertheless, what I found one of the bigger challenges, besides covering the material and so on, was writing in a way for a different audience. Writing not for my peers, even though they were constantly I felt them staring over my shoulder and telling me, why are you saying it this way? Why don't you use you know, three syllable words, as you were saying, and so, like, constantly having to, like shrug off the, the the gaze of my peers about what I was writing, and recognize and remind myself that this is a book for students, for novices, who you want to reach so that we try to keep front and center in the way we craft these books.

Chip Gruen:

So one of the things that I'm fundamentally interested in both the work the Institute and the ReligionWise podcast is the way that we talk about religion, the way that thinking about religion, not as a personal identity thing, but as a phenomenon in the world, how that happens in the public square how that happens in public conversation. And so what I always like to ask people on the podcast is, you know, for the listener out there, what can they do? What, what advice would you give them to either cultivate within themselves, or within the community that they live? To enhance the public conversation of religion? Or how do you see your project also contributing to that to that goal?

Tom Robinson:

Well, I think, if we can educate students, in the variety of religious traditions, make sense of them, to them, at some level, then we've, we've already accomplished at least the first step in making society largely aware of a different way to perceive the religious experience or religious people. So I think it's a baby step, baby step, baby step process. As we kind of, we don't saturate the society, that, that that's not the job we're doing. We know it's a step by step, small, baby step process, bringing individuals to a better understanding of the, the aspect of human society that has been there since the beginning, that is found everywhere, even in the modern world. And that is some sort of religious sensibility and concern. And if we can have students begin to think that way, that this is the way the world is, they may have a place for the diverse traditions that they hadn't had until they encountered them in an academic setting. So because often you encounter the other in a hostile environment. We are, this is us. That is them. And there's opposition. In religious studies, they don't get that they find that everyone has a place in that world. So I think but that that's a long, tedious process. generation by generation finding a new way to do it. Ours is a small contribution to that.

Chip Gruen:

All right. Well, thank you very much. I know I promised you all that I would only take an hour of your time. So I want to be mindful of that. But thank you very much. Thank you very much for your work. I know that I've only started exploring all of the materials that are available on the Robinest site. So I'm gonna keep doing that. And of course, give credit where credit is due. But I'm excited to continue exploring those things. I, I'll tell you, I'm also very interested, I've been poking around at both of your CVs. And I'm interested in other work that you've done. If you ever want to talk about it, reach out to me, and I'd be happy to do that again. But thank you very much for coming on ReligionWise Today, we appreciate it.

Tom Robinson:

We appreciate being asked. Yeah. Thank you.

Hillary Rodrigues:

Thank you, Chip, for having us.

Chip Gruen:

This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. For more information and additional programming, please visit our website at religionandculture.com There, you'll find our contact information, links to other programming, and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. ReligionWise is produced by the staff of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College, including Christine Flicker, and Carrie Duncan. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.