Spirituality, Ethnography, and Teaching

The Editors: Will Ashton earned his doctorate in philosophy of communication from Southern Illinois University. His publications include articles on critical pedagogy, the work of Paulo Freire, and spirituality and teaching. He is co-editor of the book Spirituality, Action, and Pedagogy: Teaching from the Heart (Peter Lang, 2004).Diana Denton earned her Ph.D. in holistic and aesthetic education from the University of Toronto. She integrates spirituality and the arts in her work as a professor, a poet, and a consultant. Her publications include poetry, articles on presence and phenomenology, and a book examining knowledge of poetics and the body in explorations of the heart In The Tenderness of Stone: Liberating Consciousness Through Awakening the Heart (1998). She is co-editor of Spirituality, Action, and Pedagogy: Teaching from the Heart (Peter Lang, 2004) and Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education (2005). Denton is Associate Chair in the Department of Drama and Speech Communication and Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo.

• Contents: Will Ashton/Diana Denton: Introduction: Spirituality, Ethnography, and Teaching – Ronald J. Pelias: Negotiating Spirit – Larry Russell: From the Ash – Jim Perkinson: Pilgrimage, Rock, and Spirit – Kimiko Akita: The Professional Suicide of a Japanese Woman Teacher – Peninnah Schram: The Weaver’s Thread: How Name, Story, and Prayer Form the Braid of My Spiritual Life – David C. Price: «THINK»: Transcending Unitarian and Mormon Teaching – Lori West Peterson: From Agnostic to Evangelical: How an Unlikely Conversion Birthed a Unique Convergence – Deanna L. Fassett: Calling – Caren S. Neile: An Intersession Carol: For Gloria Anzaldua, Teresa Brennan, and Stanford Lyman, with Apologies to Charles Dickens – Diana Denton: Re-Imagining the Wound: Of Innocence, Sacrifice & Gift – Carl Leggo: Attending to Winter: A Poetics of Research – Karen Meyer: Living Inquiry - A Gateless Gate and a Beach – Christopher N. Poulos: Dreaming, Writing, Teaching: Stories from Within Thin Places – Will Ashton: Worlds Apart: The Brujo, the Ayahuasca, and the Accidental Tourist – Kip Redick: Wilderness Trails, Spiritual Journeys, and Education – Isolde K. Anderson: Lost in Translation: Tracking Spirit during a Career Change – Sam Crowell/David Reid-Marr: Teaching from the Inside Out – Deborah Clark Vance: The Lessons of New Ventures – James Crocker-Lakness: Communication with Spirit – Anne Mancl: Following the Course of the Water – Elizabeth J. Tisdell: Teaching to the Music of My Soul: Catching on to the Beat of Learners’ Hearts.

«‘Spirituality, Ethnography, and Teaching: Stories from Within’ is a timely and much needed anthology of autoethnographic stories that investigate how we as scholars and teachers negotiate spirit. Rather than confining spirituality to a single meaning, the authors demonstrate multiple conceptions and interpretations of spirit and how it is lived in daily lives and communicated in the classroom. They discuss and show the role of ritual and pilgrimage; calling, belief, and transformation; caring, love, and inspiration; dancing, music, and relationships; pain, loss, and death; mystery, dreaming, and sorcery; water, nature, and wilderness; Talmudic, Unitarian, Mormon, and evangelical understanding. The stories of these vulnerable writers encourage us to think about how we communicate spirit and give us courage to bring the deeper parts of ourselves, our hearts, bodies, and souls as well as our minds – into our teaching and writing lives.» (Carolyn Ellis, Prof. of Communication and Sociology, University of South Florida)