Engaging Culture, Race and Spirituality ― New Visions

This collection of seven essays shows how faith can be an integral part of engagement with culture and exploration of one's place in the equation that is race and spirituality. The essays ask how might our examinations of our inner lives matter in teaching and teacher education, how embracing spirituality opens space in dialogues in teacher education, how to heal the pain of disconnection, how spiritually-centered caring for black students in suburban schools works, what spiritually relevant pedagogy in a global era means, how to teach from a spiritual paradigm, when fostering biracial identity in spiritual learning with black female youth is necessary, and how all who have a visionary response to teaching will succeed. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Cynthia B. Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana) is the Mary Frances Early Endowed Professor in Teacher Education at the University of Georgia. She is the author of numerous articles and two books, On Spiritual Strivings: Transforming an African American Woman’s Academic Life and Learning to (Re)member the Things We’ve Learned to Forget: Endarkened Feminisms, Spirituality, and the Sacred Nature of Teaching and Research.
Chinwe L. Okpalaoka is the Director of Undergraduate Recruitment and Diversity Services in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. In this role, she oversees the recruitment and retention of underrepresented undergraduate students. Her first book, (Im)migrations, Relations and Identities: Negotiating Cultural Memory will be published later this year.