Ep. 19: Believers in Academic Spaces (Part 2): Insiders Vs. Outsiders - Dr. Elliott Bazzano

What role does our religious identity play in how we conduct ourselves and how we are perceived in modern academia? In part 2 of our series on believers in academic spaces, Dr. Elliott Bazzano, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College, discusses being an insider/outsider in the classroom, the tension between descriptive and prescriptive scholarship, and epistemology in academic Islamic studies.

We also talk about teaching religious studies post-Trump, the debate over the role of academics engaging broader audiences to combat racism and Islamophobia after the events of Charlottesville, whether academia itself has played a role in contributing to the current toxic socio-political climate, and the importance of building our own narratives.