Religion & Education Collaborative

Excerpt from Call for Chapters: 

“This edited volume will attempt to explore and theorize the generally understudied question of how — informed by various competing discourses and narratives — nations represent their ancient and existing non-Abrahamic pagan traditions in their national curricula and school textbooks. Further, it will attempt to explore how these textual representations shape citizens’ identities, worldviews, and attitudes vis-à-vis various religious traditions and groups. Essentially, it attempts to contribute to elucidating four key questions across the various contexts in which they are relevant — the societies that predominantly adhere to some of the Abrahamic faiths.

1) How do national school textbooks and curricula in some nations portray the nation’s ancient non-Abrahamic knowledge systems, religious beliefs, and practices?

2) How do these curricula represent the nation’s existing non-Abrahamic knowledge systems, religious beliefs, and practices — including Indigenous Spiritualities — in contexts where these still exist?

3) How do these constructions andrepresentations in curricula — and pote ntially other relevant social sites — shape students’ and citizens’ identities, worldviews, and attitudes?

4) How do nations that have embraced their non-Abrahamic pagan pasts represent and negotiate this past in their national textbooks and curricula?”

More Information and Full Call for Chapters

Volume Editors: Ehaab D. Abdou, Ph.D. & Theodore G. Zervas, Ph.D.

Volume ‘Foreword’ by Prof. George Sefa Dei OISE, University of Toronto

Volume ‘Afterword’ by Prof. William Pinar, University of British Columbia

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Canada

Expected Date of Publication: March 2022