Fellowship
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.
Read MoreLearning from Practice: contemplative practice and the practice of law
Placing contemplative practice in the context of the practice of law offers students a unique opportunity to consider professional values at the heart of law. The course would encourage the knowledge that they are who they are first, and that being a lawyer is just one of their talents that, used wisely with their other skills, can give them a satisfying, rather than struggling, life. The goal is to encourage students to have experiences not only in class but also on the job in order to introduce them to the value of contemplative practice within the context of law practice.
Read MoreContemplating Nature: An Exploration of Representation of Landscape and the Environment
This project involves developing syllabi for two courses, an introduction to American Studies and an English Department senior seminar. It focuses on nature writers-not only literary authors, but natural and social scientists-who are also contemplatives: Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Richard Nelson, Terry Tempest Williams, Linda Hogan and others. Themes explored in these texts include dwelling, home and universe, comparative traditions, science, travel, the lessons of history, embodiment, ecofeminism, green movements and environmental justice, and imaginative versions of landscape by the privileged juxtaposed to the lived experience of the disempowered.
Read MoreReading and Writing Women’s Lives: Personal Essay, Autobiography, Biography, Autoethnography
”Reading and Writing Women’s Lives” is a course designed to introduce students to genres of writing that involve personal and lived experience about and by women: personal essay, biography, autobiography, and autoethnography. Not only will students be reading these forms as well as theories about writing and women’s experience, but they will also try a hand at producing them.
Read MoreTai Chi as the Basis for a New Approach to Post-Modern Dance and Movement
A central hypothesis of this course is that the teaching of Tai Chi in this country – both in academic and experiential contexts – has generally missed the essence of the actual Chinese discipline by concentrating more on the specific physical steps than on the deeper mental and spiritual principles from which it derives. A major goal of the course is to restore to the curriculum those important principles of employing certain meditation techniques that have not been taught here
Read MoreStopping 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.
Read MoreExcavating the Creative Process
Amy Cheng Associate Professor of Studio Art, State University of New York, College at New Paltz 2005 Contemplative Practice Fellowship Recipient [button link=”https://www.contemplativemind.org/admin/wp-content/uploads/cheng.pdf” color=”orange” newwindow=”yes”] View the Draft Syllabus[/button]
Read MoreThe Mystical Arts: On the Theory and Practice of Hermeneutics and Aesthetics
Jeffrey Kripal Professor of Religious Studies, Rice University and Marcia Brennan Associate Professor of Art History, Rice University 2006 Contemplative Practice Fellowship Recipients [button link=”https://www.contemplativemind.org/admin/wp-content/uploads/Brennan-Kripal.pdf” color=”orange” newwindow=”yes”] View the Syllabus[/button]
Read MoreContemplative Practice and Psychotherapy
Linda G. Bell Professor of Psychology and Director of Training in Family Therapy, University of Houston – Clear Lake 1998 Contemplative Practice Fellowship Recipient [button link=”https://www.contemplativemind.org/admin/wp-content/uploads/bell.pdf” color=”orange” newwindow=”yes”] View the Syllabus[/button]
Read MorePhysical Mindfulness: Embodying Contemplative Practice
Ann Cooper Albright Associate Professor of Dance, Oberlin College 1999 Contemplative Practice Fellowship Recipient [button link=”https://www.contemplativemind.org/admin/wp-content/uploads/albright.pdf” color=”orange” newwindow=”yes”] View the Syllabus[/button]
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