Teaching Secularism Today: A Collaborative Workshop on the Pedagogy and Politics of "the Secular"

In recent years, theoretical concepts such as "secularism," "secularization," and "secularity" have become increasingly salient categories of analysis across the humanities and social sciences. Yet teaching these frameworks can often feel overly abstract or disconnected from the urgent questions that animate students’ lives. Designed as an interactive and collaborative session, this workshop invites (but does not require) those who attend to bring syllabi, assignments, lecture materials, and in-progress ideas for collective discussion. Working together, we will ask: what pedagogical strategies equip students to critically analyze—and intervene in—the social and political formations that these concepts describe and sustain? How can we as educators enable students to see “the secular” not as a neutral backdrop, but as a historically contingent and contested formation with real effects on bodies, communities, and institutions? Particular attention will be given here to examining how teaching theory can contribute to broader projects of social and political transformation.