RELS-235* Religion and Environment: Or how I learned to stop worrying about my lectures and love my students

Abstract

This paper reflects on my experience of teaching a 200-level interdisciplinary course on “Religion and the Environment” which fulfilled requirements for students in religious studies and environmental studies. The course was taught as a “mass seminar” in which 66 students were placed into small groups, and and emphasized seminar-style discussions and formal class debates rather than lectures. An appendix of student comments reflects positively on the format and process of the course and the paper concludes by recommending this “mass seminar” approach as a way of giving humanities and interdisciplinary education to large numbers of students. This approach, however, depends on the right type of teaching space that is flexible enough to accommodate a large number of students sitting at tables facing each other.