Jeffrey Brackett, Ball State University

Jeffrey Brackett teaches Asian religions at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. His main research is about contemporary conceptions of the “monkey-god” Maruti (a.k.a. Hanuman) in Maharashtra. Some recent essays include “The Upwardly Mobile Monkey-God: Village and Urban Mārutīs in Maharashtra” in Manu Bhagavan and Anne Feldhaus (eds.), Speaking Truth to Power: Religion Caste, and the Subaltern Question in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 78–91; and (with Vijaya Dev) “Hanumān at the Center of Maharashtrian Village Life: A Translation of Vyankatesh Madgulkar’s Marathi Story, ‘Temple,’” in Journal of Vaishnava Studies 12 (2) 2004: 105–116. Brackett has participated in several intensive pedagogy seminars and workshops through the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. He has forthcoming essays related to his teaching of ethnography in Teaching Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies (Rebecca Todd Peters and Bernadette McNary-Zak, eds., Oxford University Press) and Studying Hinduism in Practice (Hillary Rodrigues, ed., Routledge Press).

Background and Rationale

The first day of my upper-level class entitled “Ethnography of Religion” someone said, “I don’t have any idea what ethnography is, but I need a 400-level course to complete my religious studies degree.” Seven weeks later, several students said the same thing either aloud, or in their journal assignments. Yet, at that point, they actually had learned a great deal about ethnography itself. Their frustration was related to the realization that there was no single way of doing ethnography, let alone defining it. Each week led to further complications related to the elusiveness of strictly defining the discipline. Meanwhile, they had been doing ethnography for nearly two months. When I shared this information with a colleague who teaches a similar course, he said that it often takes twelve weeks for everything to begin to gel in a course! It turned out that he was only off by one week: by week thirteen the whole class “got it.”

A central feature of this course is getting students out of the classroom in order to study religion in practice. My preference for the study of religion in practice is related to my graduate education. Although I was trained in religious studies, I had anthropology faculty members on my dissertation committee, and every committee member had spent numerous years “in the field.” Further, my wife and I had lived in India for several years as part of our graduate training. I am, therefore, fortunate to have the chance to bring my passion for field experience to bear on my teaching. An important lesson one learns in doing field research is that one’s topic takes shape — in many unanticipated ways — on the ground, so to speak. In teaching ethnography of religion, I have built into the course room for modification not just of student work, but of our learning as a community of co-learners. This notion of co-learners enables students more say in their learning experience. Rather than having an expert tell them what it is they ought to know, we begin by acknowledging what we each bring to the discussion. One very useful way to create such a community of co-learners is through the use of reflective journal writing.

I have used various “journal” assignments for an upper-level course, “Ethnography of Religion.” The intention was to have students combine their life experience(s) with short reflection papers, each of which contributed to their becoming novice ethnographers. The first time I assigned a journal entry, I naïvely assumed that students would compose critical, sophisticated analyses of their response to a set of readings. Clearly, my understanding of a “journal” did not match with my students’ ideas. I also learned quickly that a nonguided journal did not reach a key course objective: developing self-reflexive, analytical writing skills. This first experience confirmed common critiques of journal writing: it is too touchy-feely, does not critically engage course content, often overemphasizes student’s opinions, and is therefore overly self-referential. At the same time, several students voiced strong opposition to the amount of writing (two single-spaced typed pages) for each journal. I quickly changed the biweekly journal assignments into “guided journal” writing, and drew from the content of their journals to develop questions for future journals. That is to say, students’ journals were shaping the course in a way that allowed for great flexibility in developing what areas of course content to emphasize. Rather than strictly adhering to the proposed content, then, some readings fell out while others were substituted where appropriate.

When I switched to guided journals, I asked at least one question that required students to connect the readings with their ethnographic field work. Writing this type of highly self-reflective short essay is not simply recording one’s feelings; rather, students connect their field-work experiences with the course readings and in-class discussions, all of which are integrated into the overall course design. I also had students pair up to discuss their completed journals at the beginning of class. These conversations led to lively discussions about how they interpreted readings in radically diverse ways, as well as about the difficulties (and joys) they were experiencing in their field work. By the end of the course, students who had complained about the amount and/or type of writing required by the journals wished they had written more of them.

My choice of reflexive writing stems from the time constraints of teaching both research methods and theories in a single-semester, and having students conduct an ethnographic research project. The “self-reflective turn” in anthropological writing is hardly new, and the text I used can be used outside of ethnographic work for those instructors looking for “writing experiments” (included for each chapter) that develop writing skills (Goodall). However, that style of writing can develop writing skills that are transferable to other courses. These restrictions force me to focus on a small slice of what surely could (or should) be a two-part course. Many students comment at the end that they wished they had time to spend another semester on their projects. This emphasis does not do justice to the variety of ethnographic methods, nor does it introduce students to the anthropology of religion more broadly conceived.

For some journals, I would have students “experience” what they were only later to read about how to do; for example, without any guidance I had them attend a religious service other than their own (if they went to one) and then as soon as they left, write down everything that came to mind. After that, we discussed their responses in class. We then read about how to take field notes and what participant observation entails. To prepare them for interviews, I had them pair up in class and interview one another without any specific instruction; we then read about conducting interviews. The journal for this phase involved reflecting on what they had learned through the process — from no guidance in class — to reading and then actually doing an interview. The learning process was in this case reinforced by the field experience. This journal, then, led to further questions, which then fed into the next phase of the course. That is, the scaffolding of the course led students through various methods of research that helped them reach a metacognitive analysis of their learning. By the end of the course, several students reluctantly admitted in a final journal that they wished they had written a journal every week.

A great deal of trust must be established for this guided journal writing method to work, and I have found it to be highly effective. In fact, at the end of one iteration of this course, some students wrote about learning how to listen carefully and respectfully to others, agreeing to disagree, and having the confidence to speak one’s perspective with an authority that is tempered by humility. Again, this may evoke the “touchy-feely” campfire storytelling that overvalues self-referential experiences in education. However, the underlying pedagogical strategy here comes from active-learning, and learner-centered pedagogical models, which inform much of my approach to teaching. Student satisfaction improves by having more say regarding the format of the course. Because of the high demand placed on student-driven discussion, students come to class more prepared in part because they do not want to let down their peers, yet also because they have taken more control over their learning experience. The students and I are both pushed out of our comfort zones initially: they drive the discussion, and I relinquish a good deal of control over where the conversation will lead. Nevertheless, I frequently — some students would say too frequently — bring the organic discussion back to key ideas. This tactic is how I can use my expertise to guide students and to provoke further reflection.

Guided journal writing is one means of addressing the chasm between course objectives of professors (e.g., critical thinking and analytical skills) and those of many students (e.g., a combination of mental and “spiritual” growth; see Walvoord) in religious studies courses. In that sense, journal writing can be shaped in a variety of ways to fit with numerous courses. Regardless of the specific course or journal format, the emphasis remains on learner-centered approaches to pedagogy. A learner-centered method often shifts significantly away from a traditional course-content mastery model, which usually involves a disciplinary expert transmitting a body of knowledge to be replicated in some fashion by the student as a measure of student learning. The learner-centered model must, however, have flexibility built into the course — merely “getting through all the content on the syllabus” does not translate into learning. Some instructors might think the “less is better” approach actually to be “just less” (i.e., not real education). Learner-centered education demands more of students and instructors alike. Given the research and service demands placed upon instructors, retooling one’s approach to pedagogy may seem overwhelming, especially to nontenured and contract faculty members. And why redo one’s teaching post-tenure? For some folks, that may actually prove the only chance to do so!

The journal writing I use in teaching ethnography of religion is specific to that course, but surely can be adapted to other courses. Whether journal writing becomes one of many teaching tactics or a teaching strategy depends on how well such assignments reach the course objectives. I began using journal writing after positive feedback from students in introductory courses to short, creative nonfiction essays. One example came from having students write a letter to a loved one telling that person how the student had adopted a new religion. This assignment forced students to try to write accurately about an “other,” so they had to draw upon readings and class discussions. But they had the creative license to craft the letter as they saw fit. Much more came through in those letters about students’ understanding of, and personal experiences with, religion than straightforward descriptive writing. For my introductory course to Hindu traditions (a 200-level course), students wrote short essays in which they adopted a particular “Hindu” viewpoint and had to argue effectively not only about who they were, but also how they were different from other Hindus. Here, again, students found the creative nonfiction approach to be very challenging, yet also more rewarding than mere description. These are but two examples of how I see “journal” writing branch off into other types of writing. For me, getting course objectives, student assignments, and learning objectives to align in an integrally structured manner is critical to all of my courses. Guided journals are part of a larger, strategic arc to “Ethnography of Religion,” and have proved to be highly effective in reaching my alignment goals.