Attached Paper In-person November Annual Meeting 2026

The Power of Things: Material Culture in the Classroom

Papers Session: Teaching Tactics
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

How can we incorporate religious material culture into the classroom? How can we teach students the skills to analyze material objects? In this session, I demonstrate the value of incorporating material objects into the classroom by modeling an active learning activity for analyzing religious children’s toys. I further show how this activity can be adapted for any collection of material objects.