Project: Sacred Writes Curricular Review

Organization: Sacred Writes: Public Scholarship on Religion

Link: https://www.sacred-writes.org/

Date: 2022

Description: Over three months I directed a curricular review of the entire Sacred Writes public scholarship training for scholars of religion. My task was to assess the existing curriculum through the lens of race and racialization and provide recommendations for tangibly de-centering whiteness in the existing training. This work began by coordinating and facilitating focus groups of past Sacred Writes alumni of color and analyzing extant documents on diversity and inclusion created by the organization. Insights from this data gathering stage led to the development of concrete recommendations for the organization. Each module of the current training was then critically assessed and re-worked based on recommendations that built off these materials and my previous experience in curricular reviews.

Deliverables:

• Facilitation of focus groups that gathered Sacred Writes Alumni of Color
• Written reports on focus groups, extant diversity and inclusion documents, and analyses of all ten modules within the Sacred Writes curriculum
• Development of benchmarks and suggestions for analyzing anti-racist pedagogy as applied to the Sacred Writes training on public scholarship
• Training facilitators with strategies for hosting more inclusive learning spaces
• Short term, midterm, and long-term strategies for institutional growth and development as related to curriculum and administration
• Concrete institutional strategies for improving pedagogical outcomes during in-person, virtual-synchronous, and virtual-asynchronous trainings
• New podcasts recorded for various portions of the training that offer greater nuance to public scholarship from a community of color focused lens