Subversive Studies

In this solo episode, I share the story of my dissertation proposal process and how it leads me forward, not the other way around. I discuss the inseparability of personal explorations and scholarly inquiry, the internalized taskmaster, and how creative inquiry might be related to a meditation practice called "aimless wandering."

In this solo episode, I share the story of my dissertation proposal process and how it leads me forward, not the other way around. I discuss the inseparability of personal explorations and scholarly inquiry, the internalized taskmaster, and how creative inquiry might be related to a meditation practice called "aimless wandering."

Dan & Shah discuss creative inquiry as magic, creativity as self-making and world-making, anthropology and activism, decolonizing anthropology, queer black feminism, free-writing, autoethnography, and how creative or magical approaches to knowledge production can further empower marginalized communities.

Shah Noor Hussein, M.A. is a graduate of the CIIS Anthropology and Social Change Program where their emphasis included queer black feminism, alternative epistemologies, and liberatory pedagogies. As an artist, scholar, and activist, Shah values the roles of spirituality, embodiment, creativity, and pleasure within the writing process and the classroom. Often, experiential and integral learning practices are central to Shah’s teaching, learning and writing styles. Shah practices a teaching pedagogy that aims to hold a decolonized, racially unbiased, gender-inclusive, non-ableist, class conscious, spiritually welcoming space for all students with the ultimate goal of a career in education that is liberating for both students and professors.

Dan & Shah discuss creative inquiry as magic, creativity as self-making and world-making, anthropology and activism, decolonizing anthropology, queer black feminism, free-writing, autoethnography, and how creative or magical approaches to knowledge production can further empower marginalized communities.

Shah Noor Hussein, M.A. is a graduate of the CIIS Anthropology and Social Change Program where their emphasis included queer black feminism, alternative epistemologies, and liberatory pedagogies. As an artist, scholar, and activist, Shah values the roles of spirituality, embodiment, creativity, and pleasure within the writing process and the classroom. Often, experiential and integral learning practices are central to Shah’s teaching, learning and writing styles. Shah practices a teaching pedagogy that aims to hold a decolonized, racially unbiased, gender-inclusive, non-ableist, class conscious, spiritually welcoming space for all students with the ultimate goal of a career in education that is liberating for both students and professors.

Daniel Deslauriers and Dan discuss dreams, arts-based inquiry, contact improvisation, alternative epistemologies, living knowledge, inquiry and personal transformation.

Daniel Deslauriers, PhD, received his doctorate (1989) in Psychology from the University of Montreal (Quebec) and conducted research at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and the Chronopsychology Laboratory, Carleton University (Ontario). He lived in Indonesia and has studied the religion and sacred arts of Bali, and trained in Gamelan music and Balinese dance. He was co-founder of the Montreal Center for the Study of Dreams. Daniel co-authored Le rêve: sa nature, sa fonction et une methode d'analyse (P.U.Q., 1987), has published articles on epistemology and narrative research, and and has co-authored (with Fariba Bogzaran) Integral Dreaming (SUNY Press, 2012). His professional interests in consciousness studies include: traditional and contemporary approaches to dreams and imagination, altered states of consciousness, spiritual intelligence, and integral psychology. He is also a practitioner and teacher of Unity in Motion, a bodymind integrative practice. Daniel was selected as winner of the Templeton 2000 Science and Religion Course Award Competition for a course he developed entitled "Consciousness, Science and Religion."

Dr. Deslauriers' article referenced in the interview is:

Deslauriers, D. (1992). Dimensions of knowing: Narrative, paradigm, and ritual. ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, 14(4), 187-193.

Daniel Deslauriers and Dan discuss dreams, arts-based inquiry, contact improvisation, alternative epistemologies, living knowledge, inquiry and personal transformation.

Daniel Deslauriers, PhD, received his doctorate (1989) in Psychology from the University of Montreal (Quebec) and conducted research at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and the Chronopsychology Laboratory, Carleton University (Ontario). He lived in Indonesia and has studied the religion and sacred arts of Bali, and trained in Gamelan music and Balinese dance. He was co-founder of the Montreal Center for the Study of Dreams. Daniel co-authored Le rêve: sa nature, sa fonction et une methode d'analyse (P.U.Q., 1987), has published articles on epistemology and narrative research, and and has co-authored (with Fariba Bogzaran) Integral Dreaming (SUNY Press, 2012). His professional interests in consciousness studies include: traditional and contemporary approaches to dreams and imagination, altered states of consciousness, spiritual intelligence, and integral psychology. He is also a practitioner and teacher of Unity in Motion, a bodymind integrative practice. Daniel was selected as winner of the Templeton 2000 Science and Religion Course Award Competition for a course he developed entitled "Consciousness, Science and Religion."

Dr. Deslauriers' article referenced in the interview is:

Deslauriers, D. (1992). Dimensions of knowing: Narrative, paradigm, and ritual. ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, 14(4), 187-193.

Constance Jones, PhD, is a sociologist of religion who researches new religious movements, Hinduism and Buddhism in the West, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Knowledge, Transdisciplinarity, Heuristic Methods, J. Krishnamurti, the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, and the meeting of East and West in intellectual history.

In this episode, we discuss the social/psychological variables affecting how people relate to religion today; knowing and not knowing in religious pursuits and he ability to dwell in uncertainty; new religious movements as creative inquiry; the interplay of self-inquiry and outer inquiry; and objectivity vs. subjectivity in the study of religions.

After receiving a doctorate with honors, Dr. Jones was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of New Religious Movements of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Beginning with her doctoral dissertation on the caste system in India, she has pursued a life-long interest in the cultures and religions of India, including the adoption of Eastern beliefs and practices into Western systems of thought.

She has served on faculties of a number of graduate programs of religion, including the Graduate Theological Union; the Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Columbia Theological Seminary. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, and the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars. As a Fulbright scholar in India, she taught at Banaras Hindu University and Vasanta College and conducted research at the Krishnamurti Study Center, Varanasi.

Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, Santa Barbara, California and Waco, Texas; is an active member of CESNUR, Association for the Study of New Religions, Torino, Italy; and is a member of the International Advisory Board for “The Complete Teachings of J. Krishnamurti, 1910-1986.”

For the last 13 years, Connie has been a member of a multi-disciplinary team of scholars that investigates new religious movements around the world. The team has done research on a wide range of new religions, including the Kashi Community in Roseland, Florida; the Church Universal and Triumphant in Boseman, Montana; Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment in Yelm, Washington, the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness in Los Angeles, California; and the True Buddha School in Seattle, Washington. This research analyses the dissemination of Eastern thought in the West through religious movements with Hindu and Buddhist roots.

For the last six years, Connie has been a member of an international team of scholars working with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing researching “The Future of Religion in China.” Following four visits to mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, the team will publish a multi-disciplinary volume with analyses of religion and culture in traditional Chinese culture areas.

You can hear the podcast at the Soundcloud link below, or on iTunes or Stitcher. Please subscribe and rate/review if you enjoy, and follow us on Twitter: @CreativeInqPod.

Constance Jones, PhD, is a sociologist of religion who researches new religious movements, Hinduism and Buddhism in the West, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Knowledge, Transdisciplinarity, Heuristic Methods, J. Krishnamurti, the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, and the meeting of East and West in intellectual history.

In this episode, we discuss the social/psychological variables affecting how people relate to religion today; knowing and not knowing in religious pursuits and he ability to dwell in uncertainty; new religious movements as creative inquiry; the interplay of self-inquiry and outer inquiry; and objectivity vs. subjectivity in the study of religions.

After receiving a doctorate with honors, Dr. Jones was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of New Religious Movements of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Beginning with her doctoral dissertation on the caste system in India, she has pursued a life-long interest in the cultures and religions of India, including the adoption of Eastern beliefs and practices into Western systems of thought.

She has served on faculties of a number of graduate programs of religion, including the Graduate Theological Union; the Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Columbia Theological Seminary. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, and the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars. As a Fulbright scholar in India, she taught at Banaras Hindu University and Vasanta College and conducted research at the Krishnamurti Study Center, Varanasi.

Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, Santa Barbara, California and Waco, Texas; is an active member of CESNUR, Association for the Study of New Religions, Torino, Italy; and is a member of the International Advisory Board for “The Complete Teachings of J. Krishnamurti, 1910-1986.”

For the last 13 years, Connie has been a member of a multi-disciplinary team of scholars that investigates new religious movements around the world. The team has done research on a wide range of new religions, including the Kashi Community in Roseland, Florida; the Church Universal and Triumphant in Boseman, Montana; Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment in Yelm, Washington, the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness in Los Angeles, California; and the True Buddha School in Seattle, Washington. This research analyses the dissemination of Eastern thought in the West through religious movements with Hindu and Buddhist roots.

For the last six years, Connie has been a member of an international team of scholars working with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing researching “The Future of Religion in China.” Following four visits to mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, the team will publish a multi-disciplinary volume with analyses of religion and culture in traditional Chinese culture areas.

You can hear the podcast at the Soundcloud link below, or on iTunes or Stitcher. Please subscribe and rate/review if you enjoy, and follow us on Twitter: @CreativeInqPod.

Sam Grant is a transformative organizer, educator and facilitator working through multiple formations to advance the convivial dreaming process of individuals and networks actively manifesting health in self, relationships and local to planetary socio-ecologies.

Dan and Sam discuss creativity in activism, transdisciplinarity and the fallacies of academic disciplines, the problem with "expertise," heeding the call of intuition and the "dreaming" process, and the messiness, joy, and agony of creative inquiry.

Sam’s PhD work at the California Institute for Integral Studies focuses on integrating his life-long passions in environmental, economic and cultural justice through the lens of Africana Critical Theory to theoretically imagine how we co-transform the domination –control paradigm toward an intercultural ecological democracy. Sam is doing grassroots prototypes of what this could look like in the United States and Sierra Leone.

Sam has been on community faculty at Metropolitan State University since 1990, where he created and leads their Minor in Community Organizing and Development. He is the Faculty Director of the Environmental Sustainability program at the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs, working with students from 26 colleges and universities to engage in climate justice through local to global socio-ecological systems.

He is a lead consultant with three firms: a) a firm assemblage he founded with his wife – the Movement Center for Deep Democracy and Embody Deep Democracy – through which he is currently a capacity building consultant on a local food systems initiative funded by the Greater Twin Cities United Way; b) he has a long-standing consulting partnership with The Public Policy Project, which is now working on a major environmental justice initiative; and c) he is a consultant with Creative Catalysts, working on the African American Futures Initiative with the Saint Paul Foundation. In addition, Sam is on the participatory design team for the revamp of a long-standing arts-based community development initiative – the Creative Community Leadership Institute.

He current lives in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota with his wife Zea and their daughter Sol – two of the most amazing creative catalysts in his own life.

You can llearn a little more about his work at – www.slfnd.org, www.hecua.org, and www.susted.com/wordpress/content/2017/05/

The article Sam wrote, "Organizing Alternative Food Futures in the Peripheries of the Industrial Food System," referenced in the interview can be found here: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-06-12/organizing-alternative-food-futures-peripheries-industrial-food-system/

Sam Grant is a transformative organizer, educator and facilitator working through multiple formations to advance the convivial dreaming process of individuals and networks actively manifesting health in self, relationships and local to planetary socio-ecologies.

Dan and Sam discuss creativity in activism, transdisciplinarity and the fallacies of academic disciplines, the problem with "expertise," heeding the call of intuition and the "dreaming" process, and the messiness, joy, and agony of creative inquiry.

Sam’s PhD work at the California Institute for Integral Studies focuses on integrating his life-long passions in environmental, economic and cultural justice through the lens of Africana Critical Theory to theoretically imagine how we co-transform the domination –control paradigm toward an intercultural ecological democracy. Sam is doing grassroots prototypes of what this could look like in the United States and Sierra Leone.

Sam has been on community faculty at Metropolitan State University since 1990, where he created and leads their Minor in Community Organizing and Development. He is the Faculty Director of the Environmental Sustainability program at the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs, working with students from 26 colleges and universities to engage in climate justice through local to global socio-ecological systems.

He is a lead consultant with three firms: a) a firm assemblage he founded with his wife – the Movement Center for Deep Democracy and Embody Deep Democracy – through which he is currently a capacity building consultant on a local food systems initiative funded by the Greater Twin Cities United Way; b) he has a long-standing consulting partnership with The Public Policy Project, which is now working on a major environmental justice initiative; and c) he is a consultant with Creative Catalysts, working on the African American Futures Initiative with the Saint Paul Foundation. In addition, Sam is on the participatory design team for the revamp of a long-standing arts-based community development initiative – the Creative Community Leadership Institute.

He current lives in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota with his wife Zea and their daughter Sol – two of the most amazing creative catalysts in his own life.

You can llearn a little more about his work at – www.slfnd.org, www.hecua.org, and www.susted.com/wordpress/content/2017/05/

The article Sam wrote, "Organizing Alternative Food Futures in the Peripheries of the Industrial Food System," referenced in the interview can be found here: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-06-12/organizing-alternative-food-futures-peripheries-industrial-food-system/