...This call has been my driving force since I was a young adult, when I began a quest to design educational experiences that facilitate encounters with self and the Other, expanding each.

 

Prior to doctoral study and delivering university-level instruction, I designed and taught student-centered learning programs that offered students many ways to explore, express, and challenge what they know. I specialized in alternative assessments and curricula (think beyond the gradebook), and internet-based learning modalities. These skills and experiences continue to inform my course design. They have been especially useful during and after the unprecedented times of pandemic. The need to adapt, strategize, and reexamine our pedagogy has meant making sudden shifts in long-held educational praxis. With the mandate to reassess comes opportunities to re-envision what we are offering--what education really makes possible.

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The current moment is ripe for this conversation. It poses an invitation, really--one that calls for a multivalent, interdisciplinary approach, that looks ahead and also behind, honors individuality yet acknowledges global relationality, is conceptually capacious and ground-level-practical, all at once.

As a scholar of comparative religions, my research often delves into the heart of these intersecting perspectives. Simply put, I study meaning via mystical and contemplative traditions, Asian religious philosophies, contemporary spiritualities, religion and popular culture, and metamodern theory. I also lecture publicly on topics including the spiritual-but-not-religious, awe and wonder, the history of yoga, religion and monsters, and more. I’m co-founder/editor of the web journal, What Is Metamodern? (https://whatismetamodern.com) and currently divide my time between Vashon Island, Washington and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

 

Please peruse my website for details!