| dc.description.abstract | Religious literacy and relationship building between religious groups and individuals remain a crucial need in the United States. This need is particularly acute in ‘diversity deserts,’ such as religiously exclusive college campuses. Colleges must respond to this need and course curriculum can provide an advantageous and effective starting point. The new and emerging field of Interfaith Studies provides useful language, concepts, and methods that can be applied to research and sources within established academic disciplines to create new pedagogical models to better equip students to live well in a religiously diverse America. By demonstrating how educational objectives from the field of Interfaith Studies can be integrated into existing curricular models that utilize ethnographic narratives, an innovative model of interfaith pedagogy can be created. This method, called the shared experience model relies primarily on the work of Oddbjørn Leirvik and Eboo Patel, two leading thinkers in the field of what is being called Interfaith or Interreligious Studies. When applied to four ethnographic narratives of young Muslim Americans constructed from methods rooted in ethnography and narrative inquiry, the shared experience model can result in a reader’s development of, appreciative knowledge and narrative imagination, two key capacities from Interfaith theory. Acquisition of appreciative knowledge and narrative imagination through engagement with a narrative fosters empathy and admiration - moving the reader from tolerance to appreciation. Ultimately, it results in a self-reflection that prepares the reader to begin to consider and articulate their own narrative identity. | en_GB |
