Teaching about Religions, Medicines, and Healing

Courses on religion and health have become more popular with the rise of health humanities and applied religious studies as well as efforts to enroll health science undergraduates in our courses. In this online session, we will learn from four teacher-scholars based on their experiences teaching about religions, medicines, and healing. The first presenter analyzes challenges and obstacles involved in establishing community partnerships with curanderos, botánicos, and traditional healers and integrating traditional healing modalities into a medical humanities curriculum at a Hispanic Serving Institution. The second examines efforts to develop interreligious literacy skills among undergraduate Nursing students. Inspired by African American spiritual care practitioners, the third presenter constructs a genealogical pedagogical methodology for students to trace their lineages of spiritual care to and beyond white American Protestantism. Our final presenter discusses the challenges and possibilities of integrating world religion and global health into a first-year writing seminar. Altogether, the four presenters will speak to how teaching about religions, medicines, and healing can be a generative vehicle for exposing a diverse spectrum of students to the study of religion.