The Contemplative Practice Fellowships
About the Fellowships | The 2009 Competition | Past Recipients
About the Fellowships
This program is sponsored by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and made possible by funding from the Fetzer Institute. These fellowships seek to restore and renew the critical contribution that contemplative practices can make to the life of teaching, learning, and scholarship. At the heart of the program is the belief that pedagogical and intellectual benefits can be discovered by bringing contemplative practice into the academy, and that contemplative awareness can help to create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society.
Contemplative practices are part of all major religious and spiritual traditions, and have long had a place in intellectual and ethical inquiry and practice. Depending upon the tradition from which they come, contemplative practices are defined in a variety of ways and can help people develop greater balance, calm, empathy, improved focus and concentration, and enhanced creativity. In time, with sustained commitment, they can cultivate insight, wise discernment, awareness, and compassion.
The 2009 Contemplative Practice Fellowships Competition
Fellowships for the 2009-10 academic year are offered for the development of courses that employ contemplative practices to address issues of social conflict and injustice, the amelioration of suffering, and the promotion of peace.
- Deadline: November 15, 2008
- Amount: up to $10,000
- Tenure: Summer 2009 or one semester of the 2009-10 academic year
Approximately ten fellowships will be granted to support individual or collaborative research leading to the development of courses and teaching materials that include contemplative practices. The selection committee seeks proposals in which course content and contemplative practices are related to the consideration of social conflict and injustice, the amelioration of suffering, and the promotion of peace. Such contemplative practices can lead to genuine insights and deeper appreciation of the material under study. In a time of increasing uncertainty, strife and social fragmentation, practices that promote compassionate understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness are much needed.
We invite proposals from the full range of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspectives in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Methodologies that include practical and experiential approaches to the subject matter are especially welcome.
These fellowships are intended to support scholars for developing curricula during a summer or an academic-year semester. Individual scholars, partnerships, or groups of scholars may apply, but the maximum stipend will not exceed $10,000 for any one project. Prior experience with contemplative practice is encouraged. Assurance from the appropriate department head, attesting that the applicant will be permitted to teach the course resulting from his/her research within the academic year following the tenure of the fellowship, will be required.
Because the aim of this program is to stimulate interest in this field, fellows will be asked to complete a survey questionnaire at the end of the grant period, and to provide reports on their programs and copies of course materials to the Center for Contemplative Mind Society. In addition, fellows may be invited to share their experiences in developing these initiatives at conferences and meetings sponsored by the Center.
Eligibility Guidelines
Regular full-time faculty members at accredited academic institutions in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply for these fellowships. There are no citizenship restrictions.
Application
Completed applications must be postmarked no later than November 15, 2008. Decisions will be announced in mid-April 2009.
To begin the application process, please download the application packet:
2009 Contemplative Practice Fellowship Application Packet
Application materials for this program are provided in .pdf format; you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader (available free of charge) if you do not already have it on your computer.
A paper copy of the application packet may also be requested from fellowships@contemplativemind.org or by writing to:
Contemplative Practice Fellowship Program
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
199 Main Street, Suite 3
Northampton, MA 01060
If you have any questions, please contact Sunanda Markus, Fellowships Coordinator, at fellowships@contemplativemind.org.
Past Contemplative Practice Fellowship Recipients
Jump to a year: 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008
2008 CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE FELLOWSHIPS
This past year, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society took over the complete selection process and administration of the contemplative practice fellowship program, after ten years of working closely with ACLS (the American Council of Learned Societies). The competition was promoted widely, to include proposals from the sciences and from Canada, and resulted in the greatest number of applications ever, almost twice as many as in previous years.
The increase in applications attests to the growing interest in integrating contemplative practice into the classroom and the field of contemplative studies, but made the selection process very difficult. Among very many applications worthy of recognition, these were the strongest. We extend a warm welcome to the 2008 Fellows.
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1. LAW: Love in Action with Wisdom (a Wisdom that contains Compassion)
Arias, Maria
Adjunct Professor, Law
CUNY School of Law
Goode, Victor M.
Associate Professor, Law
CUNY School of LawThis course for law students explores the benefits of contemplative practices for lawyers doing social justice work. Students will practice a variety of meditation and contemplative practices to develop inner wisdom, awareness, and insight to inform work and decisions in lawyering for social justice. Students will explore developing compassion for themselves and the people being served. These practices will be used to open up the possibility of how to solve problems using one’s most creative selves and greatest wisdom. Students will explore how through social justice work one can transform themselves and the communities being served.
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2. Buddhist Economics: Skillful Means and the Marketplace
Barbezat, Daniel P.
Professor, Economics
Amherst CollegeThis course will examine the relationship between Buddhism and Economics to engender a means to understand individual market interactions and their connection to global economic issues. Students will be introduced to Buddhist scriptures and writings pertaining to economic matters and shown Buddhist practices and their relationship to economics and markets both in microeconomics and macroeconomics, and to businesses that have implemented Buddhist practices in their operations. In recent years, there has been much interest between cognitive sciences and economics. This course will enable students through their own contemplative practices to examine closely the local and global impacts of their market activity.
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3. Contemplative Arts and Society
Beffel, Anne E.
Associate Professor, Art
Syracuse UniversityCan art engender empathy amidst a sea of reality shows and You Tube? “Contemplative Arts and Society” engages college and high school students in contemplative video art projects and facilitated conversations in order to engender empathetic communication. Additionally, students share cultural resources across the town/campus divide in Syracuse, N.Y. In support of these interactions, students will read and discuss articles on public art, Buddhist meditation practices in the West, and social psychology. Creativity and compassion building activities include: reading; sitting meditation; creation and exchange of contemplative videos and writings; and facilitated conversations with contemplative video screenings. Contemplative videos are created from a non-aggressive state of mind for periods of five minutes. Each student uses a video camera, motionless and affixed to one object, or scene, as a tool for focusing attention more carefully upon events as they unfold at a range of paces. Facilitated conversations utilize conflict resolution techniques to engender empathetic conversations. The course will culminate in exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art and Art Museum of the University of Memphis.
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4. Urban Climate Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Justice Practicum
Carmin, JoAnn
Associate Professor, Environmental Policy and Planning
MITStudents enrolled in this course will develop guidebooks and toolkits for planners and public officials working to prepare their cities and towns for the impacts of global climate change. A particular emphasis will be placed on preparing for the impacts of climate change on the urban poor and achieving just outcomes for these and other vulnerable populations. While in the classroom, as well as while working in the field in cities throughout the world, students will engage in a series of reflective and contemplative exercises. These experiences will be used as a basis for creating materials for integrating reflective and contemplative practice into practicum and professional field-training courses that focus on social, environmental, and climate justice.
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5. Contemplating Race, Knowledge and Power: Towards Healing Forms of Critical Inquiry
Carruyo, Light
Assistant Professor, Sociology
Vassar CollegeCan learning feminist anti-racist praxis and social transformation be conceptualized as healing? In the classroom, the feelings that emerge when discussing issues of race, power and justice – be they anger, guilt, shame, denial – often make it difficult to have compassionate, honest and productive conversations. This course will use meditation in the classroom to explore how the parameters for conversations change when instead of suppressing emotions and or letting them drive responses in an unreflective way, meditation is used as a tool for acceptance. The project explores how meditation may open up possibilities for what can be taught and learned about structural inequalities and healing forms of inquiry.
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6. Quantum States of Being:
Incorporating Contemplative Practices Into the Chemistry Curriculum
Francl, Michelle M.
Professor, Chemistry
Bryn Mawr CollegeBy embedding a set of contemplative practices into the teaching of introductory quantum chemistry, this course will demonstrate for students and colleagues the value of these approaches in learning and doing science and produce materials specific to the sciences that others can use to bring contemplative practices into teaching. In the longer term, the hope is to provide nascent scientists with another set of ways to reflect on their work in relationship to the larger world. Fundamentally, a curriculum that includes contemplative practices has the potential not to merely produce scientists, but to form scientists. Science touches nearly everything; the world therefore deserves scientists who do not see themselves as masters of nature, able to trick the natural world into their will, but as those who can listen attentively enough to the world to hear its will for them. Embedding contemplative practices in a course that is perceived as rigorous and fundamental to the discipline by its practitioners lets students grow as scientists in a culture that acknowledges that such ways of seeing and relating to the world are useful for their work and congruent with what a scientist should be.
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7. Citizenship for Democracy:
Bringing Contemplation and Compassion into Community Service Learning
Kahane, David J.
Associate Professor, Political Science
University of AlbertaThis course will introduce students to theories and practices of democratic deliberation and dialogue, using a range of contemplative practices to help them explore habitual modes of engaging with injustice and suffering, and develop compassion for self and other. Contemplative practices will include meditation, conscious embodiment work, lovingkindness meditation, and free writing. These practices will orient a collective exploration of our understandings of political conflict and injustice, as these play out in different modes of structured dialogue and decision making around controversial issues.
The course will culminate with group projects, in which students work with community organizations or convene campus dialogues; these projects will provide a context in which students can mindfully notice and work with their tendencies and reactions as citizens and activists. Students will come away from the course with experience in a range of contemplative practices, new skills in compassionate speaking and listening, adeptness with different models of group dialogue, problem-solving, and decision making, and with a large space of choice when it comes to relating to their experiences of personal, social, and political suffering, as well as to fellow citizens.
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8. The Psychology of Empathy and Compassion: Contemplative and Scientific Perspectives
Kaszniak, Alfred W.
Professor, Psychology
University of ArizonaThis upper-division undergraduate honors course will combine contemplative practices and reading/seminar discussion of recent research on empathy and on compassion drawn from neuroscience, affective science, and social psychology. Each class session will begin with a period of sitting meditation to reinforce a contemplative context, and students will be encouraged to practice meditation exercises outside of class. The foci of readings, seminar discussions, and council circle will include: (1) What difference might exist in the world if more compassion were manifest?; (2) How does compassion specifically manifest in the students’ various cultures of origin?; (3) How do factors such as health/illness, sleep, diet, exercise, and physical environment/architecture affect compassionate expression?; (4) How do emotional and cognitive factors such as fear, anger, aversion, desire, stereotyping, and “judging mind” impact the ability to manifest compassion?; (5) How can discerning and skillful decisions be made in social situations without putting others “out of our hearts”?; (6) How does research in social neuroscience and affective science inform our understanding of compassion and factors that facilitate or inhibit it? How do observational and neuroscientific studies of long-term contemplative practitioners inform our understanding of the cultivation of compassion?
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9. The Practice of Environmentalism:
Cultivating and Sustaining Meaningful Environmental Engagement
Wapner, Paul
Associate Professor, International Relations
American UniversityGlobal environmental problems compromise the quality of life for many on earth and, in the extreme, threaten the planet’s life-support system. How can we best educate students to feel confident in their ability to personally and politically respond to such monumental dangers? This course involves students in practical, environmental projects and introduces them to contemplative practices through which they can appreciate the spiritual dimensions of their work. Its aim is to make environmental engagement more meaningful by experiencing environmental efforts as a practice which can both make a difference in the world and internally nourish practitioners. The course integrates vipassana meditation, dharma discussions and journaling with traditional academic study to help students understand their political motivations, the level at which their own inner, consumptive cravings are related to environmental harm, their capacity to generate compassion toward political opponents and nonhuman creatures, and their ability to develop a sense of calm and balance in their political efforts.
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10. Cultivating Ecological, Cross-Cultural, and Interdisciplinary Contemplations of Water:
a Proposed Humanities Course
Wong, Rita K.
Assistant Professor, Critical and Cultural Studies
Emily Carr Institute of Art and DesignTaught at the Emily Carr institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, which has strong interests in collaborating with local First Nations and increasing environmental sustainability, this course will explore cultural and ecological perspectives on water. In light of the anxiety caused by industrial pollution of public water sources and fears of increasing water scarcity, it is important to holistically consider what can be learned from historical, environmental, philosophical, literary, scientific, political, artistic, and spiritual texts regarding human relationships to water. The first part of the course will consider local indigenous perspectives on water, and raise questions of how to respectfully learn from First Nations knowledges. This interdisciplinary contemplation of water will also be integrated with an embodied practice. Students will take walking meditations that trace where salmon streams have been diverted or drained from their original paths. Vancouver was once home to approximately 57 salmon streams, most of which have been destroyed with urban settlement, yet small residues remain. In walking these paths, students will meditate on how contemporary urban life is a palimpsest upon an earlier landscape, and interrelations within the rapidly changing ecosystem. Students’ experiences will be written and translated into art projects, and compiled into a document that offers contemplative responses to the growing water crisis.
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11. Integrating Mindfulness Theory & Practice into Trial Advocacy
Zlotnick, David M.
Professor, Law
Roger Williams University School of LawTrial lawyers notoriously suffer from burnout and substance abuse and often adopt cynical attitudes towards their clients and themselves. Law students hoping to become trial lawyers frequently succumb to public speaking anxiety and hold self defeating conceptions of what they hope to become. This course seeks to address these issues by making the learning and practice of trial advocacy more mindful and more humane for everyone involved. This integration takes place on four levels. First, meditation and relaxation techniques will be integrated into every class to help students reconnect to their bodies and hearts. Second, students will use mindfulness to connect with their clients and witnesses on a deeper emotional and spiritual level. Third, the course will integrate Buddhist teaching about illusions of control and about connectedness to cut through the chaotic and adversarial veneer of trial work. Fourth, western notions of duality in the trial process such as right and wrong, guilty and not guilty, will be contested and students will explore more nuanced ideas about truth and justice to encourage these future trial lawyers not to discard possible alternative notions of dispute resolution such as restorative justice and mediation.
2007
Contemplative Practice Fellowships
- Thomas Andrews
Assistant Professor of History
California State University, Northridge
"Animals in America: Contemplating Cultural, Moral, and Environmental Histories"
This course uses contemplative practices to deepen students' understanding of past and present relationships between humans and other animals in what is now the United States. In particular, it includes: 1) overhauling a current seminar to incorporate contemplative practices; 2) designing an upper-level course in animal history; 3) creating a set of teaching materials comprising a course "doer" that integrates reading, contemplative practices, and writing assignments; and 4) sharing the results with university and K-12 faculty through publications and workshops.
- Kathleen Biddick
Professor of History
Temple University
"Taking Refuge: Contemplating Asylum"
This course explores the historical, contemporary, and contemplative dimensions of taking refuge and asylum: as a religious and legal practice in Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and in the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome; as an Enlightenment dream in Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” (1795); as an Enlightenment nightmare in asylums for the mentally ill and in prison designs enforcing contemplation in solitary cells; as a compassionate practice advocated by two political exiles, the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh; as an utopian democratic movement; as a personal act of silence and compassion through contemplative practices in the classroom; and as a collaborative contemplative project of community engagement in which the class explores Philadelphia’s membership in the North American Network of Cities of Asylum.
- Carole Cavanaugh
Professor of Japanese
Middlebury College
"Mindfulness, Decision Making, and the Problem of Mass Destruction"
The course identifies and analyzes decision-making contexts and processes to consider whether contemplative practice can prevent actions with destructive outcomes. Coursework includes the study of life-changing decisions made by contemplative poets and artists, Manhattan project scientists, and suicide bombers. Students track their own decision-making and mental awareness in journals they write on their daily practice of mindfulness meditation.
- Steven Emmanuel
Professor of Philosophy,
Virginia Wesleyan College
"Contemplative Practice in the Context of Service-Learning"
This model course, called “Peaceful Steps,” serves as the basis of an innovative service-learning initiative integrating contemplative practice in the service-learning experience.
- Leela Fernandes
Associate Professor of Political Science
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
"Contemplation and Non-Violence"
This course addresses the links between contemplative practice and theories and cases of non-violent social change. It focuses on historical examples, contemporary social movements, and individual practice. Texts and cases draw on contemplative traditions within four religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. The project involves academic research and an experiential training program designed to develop pedagogical practices for the course.
- Jacqueline Fewkes
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Terje Hoim
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Florida Atlantic University
"Transforming Learning Ethnomathematics through Contemplative Practices"
This project involves developing a team-taught interdisciplinary course titled “Ethnomathematics: A Contemplative Approach,” which addresses how mathematical knowledge has been constructed within a variety of value systems, with culturally specific meanings and spiritual implications. The project includes researching bibliographical sources and planning course activities that allow students to develop methods of concentration, deepen their understanding of a cross-cultural intellectual heritage, and cultivate mindfulness about the nature of knowledge.
- Rebecca Kneale Gould
Associate Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies
Middlebury College
"Practicing for Life: Nature, Spiritual Practice and Social Change"
This course focuses on the relationship between “inner work” and social change, particularly in the realms of environmental concerns and related health effects. It serves as an initial test case for examining the pedagogical benefits of attending to contemplative practice through both traditional study and experiential learning.
- Gurleen Grewal
Associate Professor of Women's Studies
University of South Florida
"Beyond Victimhood, Toward Agency: Liberating the Past, Encountering the Present"
This course develops an understanding of the force of the past alongside an awareness of the availability of choice in, and responsibility to, the present. It enables students to encounter, via literary texts, the traumatic lived experience of social injustice—economic, racial, sexual, ethnic. The texts explore varying stages of encountering social injustice: suffering and victimhood; resentment and retaliation; the refusal to remain victimized; and working through the shadow. Additional readings in depth psychology and varied contemplative practices train students to relate to the more profound philosophical questions being posed by the texts. Avoiding the pitfalls of chauvinistic and dualistic thinking, the course sustains a contemplative inquiry into identity, facilitating greater freedom from the limitations of past conditioning.
- Ines Hernandez-Avila
Professor of Native American Studies
University of California, Davis
"Ometeotl Moyocoyatzin and Ancient Nahuatl Contemplative Practice"
This course on Ancient Nahuatl philosophical, spiritual, creative, and contemplative practices reveals the eminence of self-autonomy as a key to community, justice, and peace.
- Jeanne Moskal
Professor of English
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"Mindful Passages in Travel and Travel Writing"
This course on travel literature, which has previously stressed the traveler-writer’s persona, newly emphasizes “passage,” the physical movement from place to place. Paying undivided attention to passage can be a contemplative practice, an instance of focusing on present circumstances rather than wished-for destinations. Two passage-related features are added: travel texts by walkers, bicyclists, and drivers who foreground passage over destination; and an assignment to students to use their daily commute as a laboratory on passage. They are to stop multi-tasking, stop asking “Are we there yet?” in favor of noting the physical conditions of their travel; they will record their efforts in a passage-journal. By combining these two features, this course invites students’ integration of academic and real-life experiences.
- Linda Patrik
Professor of Philosophy
Union College (NY)
"Contemplative Social Ethics"
This course shows how contemplative methods support efforts to heal the effects of racism. In New York State, three non-profit organizations that base their work on contemplative methods—the Greyston Foundation, the Oneness in Peace Spiritual Center, and the National Buddhist Prison Sangha Project—work respectively on poverty, education, and prison issues that affect minority communities. Students in this course study the contemplative methods used by these three nonprofit organizations and take field trips for the purpose of learning how contemplative methods are applied in social work. The course includes philosophical theories of altruism and social responsibility and connects these theories to contemplation and to engagement with life issues of poverty, education, and incarceration.
2006
Contemplative Practice Fellowships
- Marcia Brennan
Associate Professor of Art History
Rice University (Collaborative project with Jeffrey Kripal)
"Modern Art and Mystical Experience"
This project comprises research for a research seminar that draws on the combined methodological perspectives of art history and religious studies. Mystical texts and the visual arts have contributed immeasurably to shaping individual and collective conceptions of the spiritual in modern and postmodern culture. The integration of rigorous textual analysis with direct experiential practices brings a multifaceted approach to bear on the relationship between aesthetic and mystical creativity--between the often conflicting domains of spiritual experience, intellectual analysis, and beauty. Insight may be gainedinto the ways in which these distinctive yet overlapping modalities of knowledge have integrally shaped developments in high culture, sacred practice, and visual representation. - Santiago Colas
Associate Professor of Spanish, Latin American and Comparative Literature
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
"Stopping and Reading: Zen Contemplative Practices and Literary Study"
This project explores the integration of Zen Buddhist contemplative practices with practices entailed in academic, especially literary, reading. The mindfulness cultivated through Zen practices, and the ethical awareness that can spring from that mindfulness can inspire an academic reading practice that is both faithful to the particulars of a text’s form and sensitive to its ethical and political implications. - Jeffrey Kripal
Professor of Religious Studies
Rice University (Collaborative project with Marcia Brennan)
"Modern Art and Mystical Experience"
- Vaishali Mamgain
Associate Professor of Economics
University of Southern Maine
"Will I Be Happy? Will I Be Rich? Contemplating the Connections between Happiness and Economics"
In neoclassical economic theory (the prevailing orthodoxy) self-interested rational agents are said to maximize utility that is defined mainly in relation to income and wealth. There is increasing evidence, within economics and other disciplines, that beyond a certain level, greater income or greater consumption may not lead to greater happiness. This course presents this research to students and invites them to contemplate philosophical questions regarding the meaning of happiness, its causes and its conditions. - Graham Parkes
Professor of Philosophy
University of Hawaii, Manoa
"Hellenistic Contemplative Practices and Zen Mindfulness"
This project comprises research for a course that compares the philosophies and contemplative practices of the Stoic and Epicurean schools (that flourished in Athens and Rome from the fourth century BCE to the second century CE) with those of the Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen Buddhism (in Japan during the Medieval period). - Allen Stairs
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Maryland, College Park
"Multiple Perspectives on Vipassana Meditation: Experience, Psychology and Philosophy"
This project provides for creation of a course that looks at Vipassana meditation from three broad perspectives: experiential, psychological/scientific, and philosophical. Students learn to meditate and compare that experience with other contemplative exercises. They bring that experience to bear on questions about research on well-being and on perennial philosophical questions about the nature of the self.
Contemplative Program Development Fellowships
- William Arney
Unranked Faculty Member, Sociology
Evergreen State College (Collaborative project with Sarah Williams)
"Sensing Sophia in Illich’s Vineyard: Developing Evergreen’s Curriculum through Collegiality"
As an alternative, public, liberal arts college, Evergreen has a history of presenting academic programs according to values and principles that today, would, come under the rubric of contemplative education. By inviting colleagues to convivial, enlivening seminars and retreats, this project reinvigorates this aspect of the college’s curriculim. Ivan Illich’s work on "ascetical education"--his desire to "reclaim for ascetical theory, method, and discipline a status equal to that the University now assigns to critical and technical disciplines" complements an interest in the cultivation of spirit or the love of knowing as being (Sophia)that lies dormant in the shadow of secularism. - Heather Hathaway
Associate Dean of English
Marquette University (Collaborative project with Anthony Peressini and Michael Vater)
"Branching Out: Expanding Contemplative Horizons through Faculty and Course Development at Marquette University"
Marquette University is expanding upon its current offerings in contemplative courses. This project comprises for a summer retreat for colleagues in summer 2006 who are new to contemplative practice and five who currently teach such courses, monthly faculty conversations during the academic year, a University-wide Lecture Series that focuses on the role and incorporation of contemplation in the traditional academic classroom. Through these activities, the faculty is developing and implementing ten new contemplative courses and promoting the growth of a critical mass of faculty committed to fostering an interdisciplinary community of teachers, students, and administrators interested in contemplative practice and inquiry. - Anthony Peressini
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Marquette University (Collaborative project with Heather Hathaway and Michael Vater)
"Branching Out: Expanding Contemplative Horizons through Faculty and Course Development at Marquette University" - Michael Vater
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Marquette University (Collaborative project with Heather Hathaway and Anthony Peressini)
"Branching Out: Expanding Contemplative Horizons through Faculty and Course Development at Marquette University" - Patricia Wallace
Professor of English
Vassar College
"Creativity through Contemplative Practices: An Interdisciplinary Faculty Development Seminar"
This project provides faculty with experiential as well as theoretical knowledge about the contributions of contemplative practices to creativity in teaching and scholarship. Participating faculty explore, through a set of disciplinary projects, how to prepare for "moments of true knowledge," the breakthroughs in insight that can come when we are awake. In addition, the faculty read studies of the effects of creative and contemplative practice on thinking and awareness and engage in first-hand experiences of those practices. - Sarah Williams
Unranked Faculty Member, Feminist Theory
Evergreen State College (Collaborative project with William Arney)
"Sensing Sophia in Illich’s Vineyard: Developing Evergreen’s Curriculum through Collegiality"
2005
Contemplative Practice Fellowships
- Amy Cheng
Associate Professor of Studio Art
State University of New York, College at New Paltz
"Excavating the creative process" - Mitchell S. Green
Professor of Philosophy
University of Virginia
"Subtle self-knowledge" - David G. Haskell
Associate Professor of Biology
University of the South
"Food and hunger: contemplation and action" - David M. Levy
Professor of Information Science
University of Washington
"Information and Contemplation" - Shauna Lin Shapiro
Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology
Santa Clara University
Development of academic course on the use of meditation in psychotherapy, focusing on theory, research, and practice
Contemplative Program Development Fellowships
- Geraldine DeLuca
Professor of English
City University of New York, Brooklyn College
David J. Forbes
Assistant Professor of Education,
City University of New York, Brooklyn College
"A lotus grows in Brooklyn: nurturing a contemplative educators' network on an urban campus of public higher education" - Harold D. Roth
Professor of Religious Studies & East Asian Studies
Brown University
Towards a concentration in contemplative studies at Brown University - Joseph W. Weiss
Professor of Management
Bentley College
Introducing contemplative practices into the Bentley College curriculum
2002
- Deborah J. Haynes
Professor of Fine Arts
University of Colorado, Boulder
"Contemplation and the practice of art" - Robyn P. Hunt
Associate Professor of Drama
University of Washington
and Steven Pearson
Professor of Drama
University of Washington
"The quest for physical expression: slow tempo and silence" - John D. Lyons
Professor of French
University of Virginia
"The practice of imagination: embodied thought in early modern France" - Charles T. Mathewes
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia
"Doubt as contemplative practice" - Sol Miguel-Prendes
Associate Professor of Spanish Literature
Wake Forest University
"Contemplative Practices and Literary Creation" - Steven R. Nuss
Assistant Professor of Music
Colby College
"Contemplating Music through Contemplative Practice"
2001
- Donald L. Hanlon
Associate Professor of Architecture
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
"Toward a contemplative architecture" - Daniel C. Holland
Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Arkansas, Little Rock
"Contemplative practice, health promotion, and disability on campus: an experiential seminar in partnership with disability support services" - Dalia Judovitz
Professor of French Literature
Emory University
"Subjects of meditation: spiritual vs. rationalist passions" - Alan M. Klima
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Bard College
"Meditation and media violence: contemplative practice in Thailand and the varieties of visual experience" - Leigh E. Schmidt
Professor of Religion
Princeton University
"Roads for traveling souls: the making of modern American spirituality" - Susan E. Wegner
Associate Professor of Art History
Bowdoin College
"Art and contemplation in Christian Europe from Hildegard of Bingen to Teresa of Avila"
2000
- Valerie Malhotra Bentz
Professor of Human and Organizational Development
The Fielding Institute
and Jeremy J. Shapiro
Professor of Human and Organization Development
The Fielding Institute
"Mindful inquiry: a meditative introduction to the theory and practice of social science research" - Gudrun Buhnemann
Professor of Languages and Cultures of Asia
University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Contemplative practices in Buddhism and Hinduism: an exploration of meditation in its classical and modern manifestations" - Jane M. Danielewicz
Assistant Professor of English
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
and Laurie Langbauer
Professor of English
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"Reading, re-envisioning, and writing women's lives" - Lawrence B. Fine
Professor of Jewish Studies
Mount Holyoke College
"Contemplative practice and human relationships" - Bradford C. Grant
Professor of Architecture
Hampton University
"Urban and community design and contemplative environmental design practice" - Anne Hunsaker Hawkins
Associate Professor of Medical Humanities
Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine
"Contemplative practice and the future physician" - William J.Jackson
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
"Contemplation and music" - Jared D. Kass
Professor of Counseling and Psychology
Lesley College
"The use of contemplative practices with young adults on college campuses" - Candace Kaye
Associate Professor of Education
California State University, Long Beach
"Reading my own story: a contemplation of visual literacy for educators" - Theresa K. Kim
Associate Professor of Theatre Arts
State University of New York, Stony Brook
"Meditation in motion: the Asian style of acting" - Mary Rose O'Reilley
Professor of English
University of Saint Thomas (MN)
"A contemplative spirituality of environmental writing" - Thomas E. Peterson
Professor of Italian
University of Georgia
"Contemplative practice and learning in Petrarch" - Stephen R. Prothero
Assistant Professor of American Religion
Boston University
"Contemplating American Hinduism and Buddhism" - David B. Rothenberg
Associate Professor of Philosophy
New Jersey Institute of Technology
"The reflective technologist: from innovation to meditation" - Laurie J. Sears
Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History
University of Washington
"Contemplative practices in Java: Islam, meditation, and the performing arts" - Barbara Sellers-Young
Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance
University of California, Davis
"Contemplation, reflection, action: uniting psychological realism with contemplative practice" - Judith Shapiro
Assistant Professor of International Relations
American University
and
Paul K. Wapner
Associate Professor of International Politics
American University
"Yoga, meditation, and environmental activism" - Alan Sponberg
Professor of Asian Philosophy and Religion
University of Montana
"Virtual contemplation: Using the internet to support teaching traditional Buddhist meditation techniques" - Nancy P. Stork
Associate Professor of Medieval English Literature
San Jose State University
"Lectio divina: reintroduction of the Western monastic practice of Contemplative reading into the modern university" - Mark I. Wallace
Associate Professor of Religion
Swarthmore College
"Religion, the environment, and contemplative practice" - Craig S. Wansink
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Virginia Wesleyan College
"Contemplation in confinement: the autobiographical and the prescriptive in Prison"
1999
- Ann Cooper Albright
Associate Professor of Dance
Oberlin College
"Physical Mindfulness: Embodying Contemplative Practice" - Francis J. Ambrosio
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Georgetown University
"Dante and the Christian Imagination: Dante’s “Divina Commedia” as contemplative journey" - Cheryl A. Banks-Smith
Assistant Professor of Dance
Virginia State University
and Oliver W. Hill
Professor of Psychology
Virginia State University
and Renee A. Hill
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Virginia State University
"The Path of Inner Experience" - Bradley S. Clough
Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Religion
Bard College
and
Richard H. Davis
Associate Professor of Religion
Bard College
"Contemplative Traditions of Asia" - Yin Mei Critchell
Associate Professor of Dance
City University of New York, Queens College
"Tai Chi as the basis for a new approach to post-modern dance and movement" - Diana Hume George
Professor of English and Women’s Studies
Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College
"Compassionate Creativity: Meditation and mindfulness practice in writing poetry and nonfiction" - John J. Gibbs
Professor of Criminology
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
"Crime, Criminal Justice and Consciousness" - Anne C. Klein
Professor of Religious Studies
Rice University
"Chants, images, and mythic narratives: Tibetan contemplative praxis of the ‘Heart Essence of the Great Expanse’" - Jean L. Kristeller
Professor of Psychology
Indiana State University
"Contemplation in a world of action: experiencing the Western mystical tradition" - Patrick D. Laude
Associate Professor of French Literature
Georgetown University
"Poetry and contemplation: an inquiry into the theory and practice of poetry as a contemplative form of expression" - Joseph V. Long
Assistant Professor of University Studies
Portland State University
"Contemplation in a world of action: experiencing the Western mystical tradition" - Marilyn R. Nelson
Professor of English Literature
University of Connecticut
"Contemplative practice and the muse" - Richard E. Olson
Professor of Philosophy
Adelphi University
"Meditation and philosophy in the Asian and Western traditions" - Joel R. Primack
Professor of Physics
University of California, Santa Cruz
and Nancy Ellen Abrams
Department of Physics
University of California, Santa Cruz
"Contemplating the cosmos" - Leonard L. Riskin
Professor of Law and Dispute Resolution
University of Missouri, Columbia
Integrating insight meditation into a new law course called “Understanding Conflict” - Harold D. Roth
Professor of Religious Studies
Brown University
"The theory and practice of Buddhist meditation in critical perspective" - Jacqueline St. Joan
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Denver
"Learning from Practice: contemplative practice and the practice of law" - Kristine T. Utterback
Associate Professor of Medieval History
University of Wyoming
"Medieval Christian contemplation in history and practice" - Ekaterini Vlahos
Instructor in Architecture
University of Colorado, Denver
"Non-violent architecture: design with compassion" - Bret Wallach
Professor of Geography
University of Oklahoma, Norman
"The power of landscape: place-induced contemplation" - Michael E. Zimmerman
Professor of Philosophy
Tulane University
"Contemplative Practice in traditional cultures"
1998
- David Ambuel
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Mary Washington College
"Intuition in Philosophical Thought: Theories and Applications" - Barbara Anderson-Siebert
Director, Penn State Center for Sustainability
and Charles Cave
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, and Associate Professor of Art,
Pennsylvania State University
"Cultivating Beginner’s Mind: Contemplation as Art: Art as Contemplation" - Linda Bell
Professor of Psychology and Director of Training in Family Therapy
University of Houston – Clear Lake
"Contemplative Practice in Psychotherapy" - Janet Berlo
Susan B. Anthony Professor of Gender Studies and Professor of Art History
University of Rochester
"Art and Contemplative Practice: Through the Lens of Gender and Culture" - Peter Connor
Assistant Professor of French
Barnard College
"South Asian Civilization from the Inside: Contemplative Practice in Indian Culture" - Susan Egenolf
Lecturer in English
and Larry Reynolds
Professor of English
Texas A&M University
"Forms of Contemplation in American Cultural History" - Daniel Gold
Professor of South Asian Religions
Cornell University
"South Asian Civilization from the Inside: Contemplative Practice in Indian Culture" - Heather Hathaway
Assistant Professor of English
and Anthony Peressini
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Marquette University
"Meaning and Identity: A Contemplative Philosophical and Literary Inquiry" - Joseph Lawrence
Associate Professor of Philosophy
and Joanna Ziegler
Professor of Art History
College of the Holy Cross
"Contemplative Practice and the Practice of the Arts: East and West" - Andrew McLaughlin
Professor of Philosophy
Lehman College – City University of New York
"Environment and Consciousness" - Alexandra New Holy
Assistant Professor of Native American Studies
Montana State University
"Native American Indian Religions: Contemplation and the Sacred" - Andrea Olsen
Professor of Dance
Middlebury College
"Body and Earth: Contemplative Practice in Education" - Andrew Schelling
Assistant Professor of Poetry and Poetics
The Naropa Institute
"Bio-regional Poetics and Contemplative Traditions" - Nancy Sharts-Hopko
Professor, Nursing of Women and Infants
Villanova University
"Contemplative Practices: The Lived Experience in Illness and Health" - Anthony Steinbock
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
"Mystical Literature and Meditation" - Thomas Stewart
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of the District of Columbia
"Contemplative Citizenship Practicum" - Mary Wack
Professor of English
Washington State University
"Contemplation, Creative Action, and Pedagogies for the 21st Century"
1997
- Sr. Linda-Susan Beard
Associate Professor of English
Bryn Mawr College
"Crossing the threshold of pain’s legacy: intersection and interstices in three literary experiences of suffering" - Frederick H. Buell
Professor of English
City University of New York, Queens College
"Contemplative Practice and American nature writing" - Cheryl Conner
Assistant Director Clinical Internship Program
Suffolk University
"Being a reflective lawyer - a clinical course with mind-training lessons from the Buddhist tradition" - Judith Fryer Davidov
Professor of American Studies
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
"Contemplating nature: an exploration of representation of landscape and the environment" - Andre Delbecq
Professor of Organizational Analysis and Management
Santa Clara University
"Spirituality for business leadership" - Barbara Dilley
Professor of Interarts Studies
Naropa Institute
"History and contexts of contemplative practices in the arts" - Georgia A. Frank
Assistant Professor of Religion
Colgate University
"Images for the soul: vision and contemplation in Christian history" - Ashok K. Gangadean
Professor of Philosophy
Haverford College
"Meditative thinking in global spiritual traditions" - SunHee Kim Gertz
Associate Professor of English Literature
Clark University
"Still spaces: contemplative practice in the classroom" - Clifford A. Hill
Professor of Language and Education
Columbia University
"A transcultural approach to contemplative practices: traditional resources and contemporary educational benefits" - Marilyn Krysl
Professor of English
and Marcia Westkott
Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology
University of Colorado, Boulder
"Contemplation, poetry and ideas of self" - Daniel C. Matt
Professor of Jewish Spirituality
Graduate Theological Union
"Jewish contemplation and contemporary cosmology" - Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
Associate Professor of English
Westmont College
"Consenting to see: the practice of contemplation in literature and the visual arts" - Edward Sarath
Assistant Professor of Music
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
"Improvisation, temporality and consciousness" - Peter Alwyn Schnieder
Professor of Architecture
University of Colorado, Denver
"Found Spaces: mindful practice in architectural design" - Roger N. Walsh
Professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy and Anthropology
University of California, Irvine
"Meditation: theory, therapy, research and practice"