With the support of the Departments of Art History, English, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies and World Languages and Cultures, a slate of events from Oct. 5-9, 2026, are intended to communicate the value of the humanistic disciplines in a digital age.

All Elon community members are welcome to join. Contact Associate Professor Ariela Marcus-Sells (amarcussells@elon.edu) with any questions.聽

Monday, October 5

• Trivia Night at 6:30 p.m. at the Oak House

Tuesday, October 6

• Social Media Takeover with Humanities majors

Wednesday, October 7

• Career Paths for Humanities Majors at 6 p.m. in Lakeside 212 and 213

Thursday, October 8

• Being Human Coffee, from 9:50 鈥� 10:20 a.m. in Numen Lumen

Friday, October 9

• Being Human Alumni Reception and Networking from 4:30 鈥� 5:30 p.m. on the Spence Pavilion Patio

Visit the Humanities Week webpage for updated information.

During the Fall 2026 semester, Allocco will be teaching an introductory Hindu Traditions course and Death and the Afterlife: Ghosts, Demons and Ancestors in Asian Religions at Colgate University. In addition to teaching courses, she will present one public lecture as the NEH Chair and share her scholarship at a colloquium hosted by Colgate鈥檚 Division of Arts and Humanities.

鈥淚 loved my time at Colgate; it was obviously very formative for me,鈥� Allocco said. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 lovely to be thought of as someone who can contribute to an institution that I admire. I majored in religion, Asian studies and philosophy there, and I am doing work now that directly connects to what I studied. The first time I went to India was as a junior at Colgate and now I co-lead my own study abroad courses there. In many ways, this is a full circle moment.鈥�

She plans to use this experience as a professional development opportunity and to bring back what she learned during her time at Colgate University to Elon.

鈥淚鈥檓 excited to join a talented department and be on a campus where there is a lot of sharing of scholarship and I can learn how I can adjust my pedagogy and teaching,鈥� Allocco said. 鈥淚 am looking forward tolearning from new mentorship models and gaining fresh insights that I can bring back and infuse into my own work and classroom at Elon. I am most invigorated in the classroom when my students are shifting my thinking, so I anticipate teaching in this context will offer me new perspectives to bring back.鈥�

Personally, Allocco is looking forward to visiting with Wanda Warren Berry, professor emeritus of philosophy and religion and her mentor during her time at Colgate University, who is now 94. She is also looking forward to bringing engaged and experiential learning into the classroom and teaching in diverse contexts where students can contribute their own experiences.

鈥淎t Colgate there are many students from South Asia who grew up with Hindu culture and practices, so I鈥檓 looking forward to diverse learning environments where students can contribute their own lived experiences.鈥� Allocco said. 鈥淚 am also planning to embed some of the signature elements from my Elon courses into my classes at Colgate, such as site visits to Hindu temples.鈥�

What Allocco is looking forward to the most is sharing her Fulbright sabbatical research on soundscapes and ritual art forms in India in Colgate鈥檚 classrooms and colloquiums.

鈥淚 have new scholarship from my sabbatical in India that I am excited to test drive, present and continue to develop,鈥� Allocco said. 鈥淚鈥檓 excited for this growth opportunity and I am especially grateful to dean Kelly for his enthusiasm and support.鈥�

Allocco鈥檚 professorship is both an opportunity to contribute to another institution and to bring new ideas and experiences back to Elon.

鈥淚 am鈥痠ncredibly proud鈥痮f Professor Allocco and her well-earned distinguished professorship at Colgate,鈥� said Hilton Kelly, dean of Elon College, the College of鈥疉rts鈥痑nd Sciences. 鈥淥pportunities like this allow our faculty to share their expertise nationally while returning to Elon with new perspectives and experiences that enrich our鈥痗lassrooms and鈥痷ltimately benefit our students.鈥�

The seeds that were planted during Allocco鈥檚 time at Colgate helped to define her career at Elon.

“I feel certain that this experience will enrich my teaching,鈥� Allocco said. 鈥淭he humanities push us inquire, to ask important questions and develop our own positions. I think that happens best in conversation, so I am sure that joining a different set of conversations temporarily will enrich me as a teacher, scholar and mentor.鈥�

Colgate University, established in 1819, is a liberal arts college located in New York with an enrollment of over 3,000 students. Their Department of Religion has nine faculty members.

Related Articles

• Strategic multifaith engagement shapes the Elon campus experience
• Elon students and faculty extend multifaith engagement to the community

One of the central goals of Elon鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan is to 鈥渟upport opportunities for multifaith learning and engagement for all members of the Elon academic community,鈥� including through academic opportunities. While many students at Elon may take a single course during their time at Elon that focuses on the study of religion or spirituality, a select group of students specializes in academic multifaith learning: religious studies majors.

Last month, 11 students graduated from Elon with degrees in religious studies, the largest number of Religious Studies majors graduating in a single year since 2012.

鈥淭he number of majors in our department has grown substantially over the last several years,鈥� said Geoffrey Claussen, professor of religious studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies. 鈥淪tudents seldom come to Elon planning to major in religious studies, but students often take courses during their first year that whet their appetite for further learning. They are able to recognize how the critical study of religion helps them to understand the world, and they appreciate the mentorship and community that our department offers.鈥�

Religion is anything

The course that hooked Tracey McCarty 鈥�26 on religious studies was 鈥淩eligion and American Popular Culture,鈥� taught by Andrew Monteith, and explores how religion can be found in many unexpected places in popular culture and imagined in radically different ways.

“I was taught a very specific concept: religion is anything,鈥� McCarty said. 鈥淭his was a game-changer for me. To understand religion not as a cohesive and strict definition, but as this conceptual ball that can be shaped in any way. Seeing religion as not an institution, but as a thing that a single person can define for themselves, was beautiful.鈥�

One of the goals of Elon鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan is to develop courses that 鈥渟upport student learning about diverse religious, spiritual, and secular traditions and identities.鈥� In the Religious Studies department, these include 鈥渢raditions鈥� courses that explore how sets of traditions often viewed as static religions are characterized by significant diversity and can be depicted in very different ways.

Tess Trayner 鈥�26 explored the diversity of Buddhisms in 鈥淏uddhist Traditions,鈥� taught by Pamela Winfield.

鈥淲e traced Buddhism from its founding more than 2,000 years ago through its development across Asia and into the West, and Dr. Winfield refused to let us treat any of it as exotic or static,鈥� Trayner said. 鈥淭he unit on Orientalism and Buddhism in America helped me better understand the decontextualizing nature of mindfulness apps, yoga studios, and how to approach the version of Buddhism most familiar to American audiences. Learning to see Engaged Buddhism as both an authentic tradition and a phenomenon shaped by Western projection gave me tools I now reach for constantly 鈥� tools for noticing whose version of a tradition gets centered, and why.鈥�

Another Traditions course, 鈥淛ewish Traditions,鈥� taught by Claussen, featured opportunities to role-play debates about how Jewish tradition should be understood. In this class, Trayner had the opportunity to step into the shoes of thinkers with whom they sympathized and others whose views they found reprehensible.

鈥淚 discovered that wrestling with viewpoints I disagree with sharpens both my disagreement and my empathy,” Trayner said. “It is one thing to read a Jewish thinker. It is another to inhabit them long enough to understand how their historical moment shaped what they could imagine.鈥�

Multifaith at home and abroad

Elon鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan also commits the university to developing 鈥減athways for experiential and engaged multifaith learning,鈥� including through study abroad courses that 鈥渟upport engagement with global religious communities.鈥�

Trayner had a significant learning experience taking 鈥淚ndia鈥檚 Identities,鈥� a course taught in South India by Amy Allocco and Brian Pennington. The course 鈥渄econstructed what I thought I knew about Hinduism, and rebuilt it with a critical emphasis on vernacular practice and the lived religion of regular, everyday people. As such, the class refused the traditional classroom format. Instead, Dr. Allocco’s deep roots of connection in Chennai meant we sat in living rooms with the most incredible people.鈥�

Students have also been equipped by their Religious Studies coursework to engage with communities closer to home. Alyssa Carney 鈥�26, for example, volunteered at the Burlington Masjid, teaching English to newcomers. Experiences of working with displaced people led her to propose a new unit for her 鈥淓ngaging Islam鈥� course, taught by Ariela Marcus-Sells.

What makes this course unique is its 鈥榖uild your own path鈥� structure, which allows students to shape the direction of their learning based on their interests and experiences, Carney said.

鈥淔or me, it created an opportunity to connect my volunteer work with my academic inquiry. As I was working closely with migrant communities, I became particularly interested in the topic of displacement within Islam. This led me to propose a unit based on a textbook chapter, 鈥楻efugee Horizons,鈥� which focuses on the experiences of Muslims in Myanmar, particularly the Rohingya,” Carney said “Through this unit, I explored how the Rohingya negotiate their Islamic identity in the face of systemic violence and ethnic cleansing, deepening both my academic understanding and my connection to the people I work with at the masjid.鈥�

Advancing Equity

The Multifaith Strategic Plan also directs Elon to 鈥渆xplore new modes for student learning about religion and race, especially in connection with the Advancing Equity requirement.鈥� The Religious Studies Department offers multiple courses each semester that meet that requirement.

This spring, Trayner took an Advancing Equity course titled 鈥淩eligion, Race and Resistance,鈥� taught by Sheila Otieno. Through courses such as this, Trayner said, 鈥渢he department has prepared me to take real questions into the world. Dr. Otieno’s course gave me a framework for connecting religious and racial construction to the systems that shape American life, and how I can become a more intentional and thoughtful participant in America鈥檚 futurity.鈥�

McCarty shares that their understanding of race and religion were shaped by studying Judith Weisenfeld鈥檚 “Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake” in the religious studies senior聽seminar, taught by Marcus-Sells, exploring 鈥渉ow racism in America not only shaped psychiatry but also how Black religion is viewed. This perspective of religion as a political force in the world made me more knowledgeable about how the current society we鈥檙e in was created.鈥�

McCarty found that the department provided an inclusive space for exploring interesting and challenging questions.

鈥淭he department has always been welcoming to anyone who has joined,” McCarty said. “I鈥檝e been able to form great connections with those in the department, and they鈥檝e been incredibly open to accepting diverse worldviews.鈥�

Carney connected her experience as a religious studies major with the larger institutional objectives found in the Multifaith Strategic Plan.

鈥淭he Religious Studies Department at 福利亚洲国产精品 actively advances the goals of the multifaith strategic plan. It does so not through a single initiative, but through an ecosystem of mentorship, community engagement, creative coursework and genuine care,” said Carney.

Trayner emphasized the importance of Religious Studies in the current political climate.

鈥淭hanks to this department, I’ll leave Elon with a degree in religious studies and a much harder-won inheritance: the habit of holding complexity, the conviction that ordinary people are experts on their own lives, and the trust that careful, plural study of religion is exactly the kind of preparation this fractured moment is asking of us,” said Trayner.

This story is the fourth and final in a series of stories focusing on 福利亚洲国产精品鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan.

The article is titled 鈥淜indness, Compassion, Love, and Generosity at a Time of Mass Killing: The Musar Teachings of Rabbi Amy Eilberg.鈥�

In the article, Claussen analyzes the musar (virtue/character-focused) teachings of Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman ordained as a rabbi within Conservative Judaism. He focuses on how Eilberg’s work has emphasized kindness, compassion, love and generosity and how her writing has developed in response to extreme violence and suffering in Israel/Palestine since Oct. 7, 2023.

In 2023, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Andrew Monteith was at the Chicago Historical Society, hoping to find material related to the eugenics movement in the records of the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute. Much to his surprise, one of the folders contained nearly 150 pages of autobiographical text addressing sex between men in the 1910s-20s, authored by an inmate at Pontiac Prison. Homosexuality was illegal in this era, and in the late 1920s the Chicago police ran sting operations against gay men. 鈥淗enry鈥� was caught in one of these raids.

Appearing in the most recent edition of QTR: Trans and Queer Studies in Religion, Monteith鈥檚 article focuses on a critical section of Henry鈥檚 autobiography in which Henry explains a polyamorous marriage with two other boys at a Christian boarding school. Henry鈥檚 strict, religious parents boarded him at the Todd Seminary for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, hoping the experience would “straighten him out.” Single-sex institutions (schools, prisons, etc.) have often had generative spaces for queer relationships, and boys at Todd Seminary were no different. Henry found a romantic triad with 鈥淲ill鈥� and 鈥淛unior,鈥� although Junior鈥檚 role in the marriage leaned asexual.

Monteith employs religious studies methodologies to make sense of the wedding. Rather than assuming the ceremony was satire simply because of the boys鈥� age, Monteith points to Henry鈥檚 own description of the wedding as serious business. The ritual objects involved鈥攑articularly a homemade wedding license that named all three boys鈥攈elped them define and validate their union. Henry鈥檚 account is tragic, however, since graduation meant separation, and Henry was never able to recover another union like it. The irony is that for someone with Henry鈥檚 personality, the Christian boarding school offered a more stable environment for queer romance than the more freewheeling life of gay Chicago did.

Henry鈥檚 imprisonment took a psychological toll, and his autobiography expresses ambivalence about his sexual orientation. On one hand, he defends his queer marriage as beautiful, but on the other, he explains that he wishes to undergo conversion therapy at an asylum. After leaving Pontiac Prison, Henry married a woman and raised multiple children.

The full open-access article can be found online:

Six rising juniors have been named members of the tenth class of Multifaith Scholars, a two-year fellows program for juniors and seniors that offers a closely mentored, experientially rich and intellectually rigorous educational opportunity for students with significant potential.

After a highly selective application and interview process, students are awarded $5,000 annually to support research and study in global contexts connected with religious diversity and multi-religious societies. Students who show great potential as academically curious and socially engaged leaders committed to their own ongoing development and the enhancement of their local and global communities are selected each spring.

鈥淚 am delighted to welcome these six impressive rising juniors into the Multifaith Scholars program and look forward to supporting their compelling projects over the next two years,鈥� said Amy Allocco, director of the Multifaith Scholars program. 鈥淭heir research interests include music and Christian religious experience, linguistic anthropology and the vocabulary of faith, religious diversity in clinical settings, gender and religious roles in Asian art, the intersection of biomedicine and traditional healing practices and the history of Black churches here in Alamance County.鈥�

In addition to pursuing their faculty-mentored undergraduate research projects and undertaking academic coursework in religious studies and interreligious studies, the scholars will extend the program鈥檚 ongoing community partnership with the Burlington Masjid. Through the partnership, scholars teach English classes, participate in youth and social events with the local Muslim community, join community garden workdays, volunteer with the food pantry and take part in potlucks and iftar meals during Ramadan.

鈥淚t is wonderful to welcome such a strong class with such diverse academic interests,鈥� reflected Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, which supports the Multifaith Scholars program. 鈥淎s we approach the tenth anniversary of the MFS, it is gratifying to see so many clear signs of the program’s maturity and significance: our largest class ever, the inclusion of seven new faculty mentors, and students majoring in three disciplines never before represented in MFS.鈥�

The 2026-2028 Multifaith Scholars

Addison Anderson

Majors: History, Sociology

Minors: Museum Studies, Public History, and Interreligious Studies

Mentor:聽Amanda Kleintop (History and Geography)

Project Title: History and Memory of Alamance County鈥檚 Black Churches

Proposed Research: Examine the relationship between Alamance County African American churches and local politics in North Carolina from Reconstruction through 1900.

Blair Berenson

Major: Anthropology

Minors: Jewish Studies, Sociology, Philosophy and Interreligious Studies

Mentors:聽Amy Allocco (Religious Studies) and Devin Proctor (Sociology & Anthropology)

Project Title: An Anthropological Approach to Cross-Generational Shifts in Hindu and Jewish Perspectives of Faith in the US

Proposed Research: Conduct fieldwork in Jewish and Hindu communities in Atlanta to understand how different generations articulate the concept of faith.

Katie Castelo

Major: Biochemistry

Minors: Neuroscience, Spanish, and Interreligious Studies

Mentor:聽Cathy Quay (Nursing)

Project Title: Bridging Faith and Medicine: Improving Cultural Awareness of Religious Practices in the Healthcare System

Proposed Research: Explore the healthcare industry鈥檚 approach to death and ways it can be more open to diverse religious practices.

Faith Elliott

Major: Neuroscience

Minors: Expressive Arts and Interreligious Studies

Mentors:聽Lynn Huber (Religious Studies) and Morgan Patrick (Music Theory)

Project Title: Neurotheology: An Interdisciplinary Study into Sacred Music and Feelings of Well-Being

Proposed Research: Examine the historical significance of music and understand and measure the behavioral impact associated with an emotional, transcendent spiritual experience and the well-being that results from listening.

Mariama Jalloh

Major: Public Health

Minors: Biology and Interreligious Studies

Mentor:聽Sandra Darfour-Oduro (Public Health)

Project Title: Faith, Healers, and Health: How Religious Beliefs and Community Trust Shape Healthcare Decisions in West African Communities

Proposed Research: Examine how religious leaders and traditional healers influence healthcare decisions in communities in Ghana, and how public health programs can partner with these practitioners to improve health education outcomes.

Ryleigh Rouse

Majors: Art History, Religious Studies

Minors: Museum Studies and Public History and Asian Studies

Mentor:聽Kirstin Ringelberg (Art History)

Project Title: Religion鈥檚 Impact on Japanese Women: Through an Art Historical Lens

Proposed Research: Employ art as a lens to examine how religion shaped gender perceptions and Japanese women鈥檚 roles.

Jassal鈥檚 research centers on the dynamic relationships among person, place and divinity in South Asia, particularly in the Himalayan region of Uttarakhand in northern India. Through years of ethnographic fieldwork, he has explored how Hindu communities actively construct and experience sacred worlds through ritual practices such as shrine-building, pilgrimage, festival celebrations and spirit possession.

A key theme of the lecture was the idea that Hindu deities are not fixed but relational and mobile, often requiring 鈥減lacemaking鈥� practices to remain connected to human communities. Jassal discussed how rituals鈥攊ncluding the relocation of deities to more suitable or accessible sites鈥攕erve as what he described as 鈥渢echnologies of healing鈥� that reshape social realities. These practices, he argued, reveal the agency not only of human participants but also of non-human actors, such as deities themselves.

In addition to the lecture, Jassal shared a short documentary film, offering students a vivid, sensory perspective on his research. The film emphasized the importance of sound, movement, and atmosphere鈥攅lements that written ethnography alone cannot fully capture. Students noted that this visual component deepened their understanding of the material, making the lived realities of ritual practice more tangible.

The day prior to his lecture, Jassal participated in a casual lunch with students, creating space for informal conversation about his work, academic journey and the role of storytelling in research. Attendees described him as engaging, passionate and genuinely enthusiastic about student curiosity and dialogue. Following lunch, Jassal also visited Amy Allocco鈥檚 4000-level Religious Studies seminar, 鈥淕hosts Demons, and Ancestors in Asian Religions,鈥� where students had been assigned chapters of his book and came prepared to engage directly with his research. During the class, students asked questions about Jassal鈥檚 fieldwork, methods, and key concepts like placemaking, creating an interactive and discussion-based environment. The session allowed students to connect course material with a guest scholar, deepening their understanding through conversation and critical engagement. Jassal emphasized the importance of intellectual openness and positionality in ethnographic research. His reflections encouraged students to think critically about how knowledge is produced and whose voices are amplified.

By the end of the lecture, it was clear that Jassal鈥檚 work not only expands scholarly conversations about religion and anthropology but also resonates deeply with students exploring questions of culture, practice, and representation. His visit left a lasting impression the importance of bringing diverse worlds into conversation.

The series is a multi-volume set that surveys the social and cultural construction of specific subjects across six historical periods, from Antiquity to the Modern Age. Otieno鈥檚 chapter, titled 鈥淧overty and Gender: A Cultural History,鈥� appears in Volume 6 of the Anthology, 鈥淎 Cultural History of Poverty,鈥� edited by Steven Beaudoin and Richard Axtell, which covers the Modern Age.

The chapter thoughtfully applies insights from Womanist and African feminist thinkers to examine poverty and gender as central global ethical issues. It discusses how Nnobi women in Igboland, Nigeria, historically challenged gender and patriarchal norms by leveraging religio-cultural categories to gain wealth and influence. Highlighting the persistence of the gender pay gap, it notes that labor and wages are largely male-centered and thus discriminate against non-male agents.

By explaining how women and LGBTQ individuals navigate these constraints, Otieno argues that women and other genders tend to produce unusual labor market outcomes, which are still measured using male statistics and language, thereby greatly undermining their effort, productivity and value.

The chapter also advocates viewing poverty as a collective moral issue rooted in communities rather than in individual agents, emphasizing how labor markets continue to erode traditional religio-cultural practices across Africa and Asia, such as the selection of trokosi shrine guardians in Ghana and the exploitation of widows and their inheritance in various African contexts.

Covering broad global issues faced by women, the chapter underscores how systemic poverty affects women worldwide. It calls for just treatment and community-focused socioethical interventions to address the disproportionate impact of capitalist systems on non-male laborers and their labor.

Related Articles

• Strategic multifaith engagement shapes the Elon campus experience
• Elon welcomes ninth class of Multifaith Scholars

At 福利亚洲国产精品, faculty say preparing students means helping them understand the people they will interact with throughout their lives, and that includes the influence of faith and religious identity.

That commitment to multifaith understanding is a primary goal of the university鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan, which strives to 鈥渟upport opportunities for multifaith learning and engagement for all members of the academic community.鈥�

鈥淓lon鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan is a promise to our students, faculty, staff and the wider community that we will take them seriously as whole, complex people,鈥� said Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society.

The multifaith experience

The Multifaith Scholars Program is a two-year program, founded in 2016, that emphasizes interdisciplinary learning as student scholars undertake original research projects and study in global contexts connected with religious diversity and multireligious societies.

鈥淥ur work is richer when we have students bringing questions from their own disciplines,鈥� said Amy Allocco, director of the program and professor of religious studies. 鈥淚t is a sign of a vibrant campus ecosystem when not only students but also their mentors can see their interests and expertise 聽intersect with questions of interreligious contact, religion and society.鈥�

Allocco says that the breadth of disciplines represented by students and mentors participating in the program has widened each year. The current cohort includes students with diverse majors such as psychology, theatrical design, history, economics consulting, political science, religious studies, and international and global Studies. Owen Hayes 鈥�26, a history major with minors in political science and religious studies, is a 2024-2026 Multifaith Scholar studying the historical and contemporary relationship between Christian missionaries and Indigenous Australians.

鈥淚’ve always been interested in understanding the interreligious encounters of the world, like global Christianity and understanding how different communities can come together and understand such an important religious concept in such different, varying ways, but still have that belief of Christianity,鈥� Hayes said.

The interreligious studies minor also allows students to analyze the historical and contemporary encounters between and interactions among religious communities and traditions.

鈥淓lon has done incredible work in enfranchising multifaith as an academic as well as a student affairs initiative and aligning and even blending those areas in meaningful ways that enhance the student experience,鈥� Allocco said.

Multifaith in the classroom (and clinic)

In the Department of Nursing, faculty don鈥檛 just train future healthcare professionals on specific medical assessments but, as Assistant Professor of Nursing Lori Hubbard says, they 鈥減repare students for the diversity in the populations they will serve,鈥� including religion.

鈥淒iversity in people is understanding their religious background, because religious practices are often infused into health practices and health beliefs,鈥� said Hubbard, who teaches the Healthcare Relationships course, which focuses on understanding diverse backgrounds in healthcare.

The course is just one component of the Department of Nursing鈥檚 commitment to equitable healthcare teaching, which is incorporated throughout the curriculum.

鈥淔rom birth to death and everywhere in between, the people that are going to be important in a person鈥檚 wellness or their healing may come from their church body,鈥� said Hubbard, who says they also want students to understand the role of the chaplain in a hospital setting. 鈥淧eople may have members of a church congregation bring them meals, they may have pastors and friends visit to pray with them. A person’s support network is a social determinant of health.鈥�

In December 2025, a faculty team consisting of Pennington, Jeanmarie Koonts, assistant professor of nursing; Molly Green, assistant professor of public health, and Helen Orr, assistant professor of religious studies, was awarded a $60,000 Faith & Health Campus Grant from Interfaith America to promote awareness of how religious diversity impacts healthcare space and medical decision-making.

Engineering a multifaith course

Along with nursing, several Elon courses across disciplines integrate multifaith understanding. Orr is co-teaching a new course, Engineering A Better World, with Professor of Engineering Sirena Hargrove-Leak on ethical practices in engineering.

鈥淩eligion is an important category for a lot of people, and it informs not only beliefs, but also everyday practice and ritual, including when people fast, how they dress and how they interact in professional spaces,鈥� Orr said. 鈥淥ne of our sessions in the course focuses on the value of multi-faith spaces in professional working environments. Those spaces can be beneficial both for religious people and non-religious people, while also encouraging us to think about how environments themselves can be designed to be more inclusive.鈥�

Hargrove Leak says the engineering curriculum requires an ethics course and, historically, faculty advised students to choose an ethics course through the Core Curriculum. The downside, she says, is they may not connect what they’re learning to engineering practice. This new course, she says, connects the dots directly.

鈥淭he work of engineering professionals has the potential to impact people directly; therefore, ethical practice is critically important,鈥� said Hargrove-Leak.

Communicating religion

While Orr and Hargrove-Leak鈥檚 course is new this semester, Professor of Journalism Anthony Hatcher has been studying and teaching the intersection of religion and media for more than 20 years. His course Religion and Media analyzes how the two interact through media coverage of religious issues and themes, religion’s use of television and the Internet and media portrayals of religious people and traditions.

Hatcher began teaching the course in 2003, coming from a longtime interest in the intersection of the two subjects.

鈥淚t has always sparked my interest how religion intersects not only with a news item, but how it intersects with popular culture,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 tell my students, 鈥業f there is a secular entity of some sort, there is a religious corollary to it.鈥欌��

Finding religious connections in culture is endless for Hatcher, who says he never runs out of material for the course. For one assignment, students must attend a house of worship outside of their own faith and do a research project on the experience. The projects range from more well-known religious practices to lesser-known, like a student who visited a coven of witches in Hillsborough, North Carolina

鈥淚 make it clear: this is not a religion class. I’m not here to teach you about the scripture,鈥� Hatcher said. 鈥淲hen they go (to these houses of worship), it’s not just a religious thing. I say, 鈥榃hat kind of media did they use? Do they have cameras? Do they have a single microphone? Do they use screens and slides? Is it a majestic organ? What are you seeing there? Did they give you a paper program? Everything that’s media.鈥� It gets them thinking about all the mediated ways that they experience religion.鈥�

The course is open to all majors, and Hatcher says it can be relevant for all professions.

鈥淭he subject matter is so important,鈥� Hatcher said. 鈥淚t’s like how study abroad is mind-broadening. I think understanding where somebody else comes from, especially if faith is a big part of who they are, is a big deal.鈥�

And for Pennington, Elon鈥檚 approach to multifaith learning is an example for others to follow.

鈥淲e live in a moment where we can clearly see that the faith commitments and religious practices interact with our global politics, our legal systems, our media environments, and our healthcare systems,鈥� said Pennington. 鈥淏y attending to multifaith education across academic departments and programs, Elon is leading the way in preparing its students for a rapidly evolving world.鈥�

This story is part of a series of stories focusing on 福利亚洲国产精品鈥檚 Multifaith Strategic Plan.聽

Vasudha Narayanan, distinguished professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Religion, introduced Allocco鈥檚 keynote. Allocco focused her lecture on pampaikk膩rar, musicians who play the twin-headed set of drums known as pampai and sing to invoke the deities in diverse Hindu devotional contexts. Drawing on material from her recently completed sabbatical fieldwork project in Tamil-speaking South India, she highlighted the role of pampaikk膩rar as both musicians and ritual specialists who invoke deities through sound. She argued that these practitioners innovatively adapt their performances in response to changing aesthetic preferences, devotional needs and social contexts while both maintaining credibility and inspiring the 鈥済od-feeling鈥� referenced in the title of her presentation. Allocco also reflected on her own research methods, emphasizing how fieldwork relationships as well as lived traditions shape scholarly questions and, by extension, outcomes.

Following her address, Allocco met with graduate students for an hour-long seminar on methodologies for the study of religion, where emerging researchers had the opportunity to ask questions about ethnography and research ethics as well as their own projects. Participants read two of Allocco鈥檚 journal articles, which had been selected by conference organizers as the starting point for this seminar.

On Saturday morning, Allocco delivered welcome remarks to inaugurate the full day of paper sessions. The symposium was sponsored by the University of Florida鈥檚 Department of Religion with support from its Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere.