it must be 4 pages minimum in length; typed (12 font, doubled-spaced, w/ 1” margins); 

Theme – Dwelling-in-Crossing, Crossing-in Dwelling — Academics & Life

Your job is to interpret, in your own words, and from your own academic and disciplinary perspective, what the following statements and claims might entail for Thomas A. Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion.  In other words, write a well-organized, argued, and theoretically persuasive essay about the nature of both being in place and moving across space in religious studies as an academic discipline [or your own or related academic discipline(s)], and what we, as both students and teachers, hope to accomplish within such professional (and personal!) borders and boundaries.

Tweed, in his “Conclusion,” states provocatively:

The tropes of dwelling and crossing, also have even wider application.  They are useful for imagining the study and teaching of religion, and other fields in the humanities and social sciences.  In the classroom and the study, scholars are dwelling-in-crossing, and crossing-in-dwelling.  Returning to my analysis of theorizing in Chapter 1 and extending my analysis of religion in Chapters 4 and 5, I suggest that interpretation and pedagogy  are about being in place and moving across. (178)

And therefore:

When it’s effective, teaching—and learning—means moving back and forth between the familiar and the strange, and the familiarization of the other generates a limited but transformative empathy, which is one mark of the educated person, the human neighbor, and the effective citizen.  Teaching—and learning—is transport that transforms. (180)

Please feel free to creatively and critically utilize all resources provided thus far by the course, including the centrality of Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling, daily lectures, as well as any image/video material shown in class thus far.  Of course, you may use outside resources – just cite appropriately.