"In Relation": The Radical Act of Curriculum as Theological Text

• In Event: 75.015 - Advocacy and Activism in Curriculum Studies: Reconceptualizing the Field

Abstract

This essay represents a new direction for my work, or perhaps more appropriately, taking a different path along the road. My work as a curriculum theorist has until now focused primarily on what Brian Casemore has called the autobiographical demand of place. Place for me demands to be unpacked and examined to see its interrelatedness with self and society; place as it is intersected by gender, sexuality, race, and fundamentalist Christianity is a rich context through which to approach curriculum as the interpretation of lived experiences. Southern place is an appropriate stage that allows us to see political and social trends up close and personal. The South’s skeletons are in open closets; thus, we can take the pulse of U.S. culture by examining the Heart of Dixie. This is the shape of my curriculum theory. With this essay, the demand takes a decidedly theological turn. It is no longer enough to talk about place in terms of how it both shapes and is shaped by religious experience. Religion without theology is vacuous; and while the narratives have value phenomenologically and autobiographically, they now also beg to be theorized theologically.
In Understanding Curriculum, Pinar et al proposed Curriculum as Theological Text. As I had primarily approached curriculum as phenomenological, autobiographical, and gendered texts, I acknowledged theological presence indirectly, or more precisely, with presumption. I wrote from my own assumptions, speaking not so much theologically as anecdotally about religion. There is, it may be surprising to some to consider, theological grounding in fundamentalist faith, even as it is manifest in its activism, such as the Religious Right. The fundamentalist parts of my autobiographical narratives about place can still shock, anger, baffle, embarrass, and sadden even me. It is usually the part people ask me to talk more about. And, since my religious upbringing is such a substantial part of my identity, I will continue to talk about these experiences in the context of and to contextualize Southern place. This work marks my first attempts to talk about place, and thus curriculum, by framing it theologically. I thus integrate the language of theology into how I speak, theorize, about curriculum, using, as Terry Eagleton might phrase it, “God-talk” (2009, p. 38). In this essay, I will propose “thinking theologically” about curriculum and explore, through exegetical examination of key theological texts, how we might talk about faith, the spiritual, and education in meaningful ways.

Author

• Reta Ugena Whitlock, Kennesaw State University