As author and environmental activist Joanna Macy writes, “We are relations before we are separate things, and power lies in the group. When we realize people come together to make a system, something emerges from their work that was not there before. That is magic.” In this session, Dr. Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square will discuss her interdisciplinary, collaborative, and empathy-based approach to teaching and explore the magic that emerges when teachers and learners work together.
Education, informed by empathy, connects us with others and enables us to expand our circle of understanding, to create new neural networks borne of new ideas and possibilities and experiences. Because our brains thrive on novelty, this in turn increases the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is associated with focus, motivation, and happiness. Education also teaches us to live in a state of what Abraham Joshua Heschel refers to as “radical amazement.” As he instructs, “get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible.” This is what an education provides, the invaluable opportunity to not only find and make meaning but to become alert and attentive to the miracle and mystery of being alive and living among others.
By imparting the gift of shared experience and discovery, education cultivates empathy and compassion, reminding us that we are meant to care about and cooperate with others. In this talk, Dr. Jones Square will be joined by former and current students, each of whom will share their own thoughts on education.
Dr. Jones Square is joined by the following students:
- Colin Ahern (third-year Honours English student, minor in Communications)
- Alexandre/A. P. Bergeron (recent graduate, Film and Arts Administration Studies)
- Sarah Boudreau (recent graduate, English; doing an MA in English at Queen’s)
- Eryn Costello (second-year English Literature and Political Science)
- Carina Divinaflor (second-year Education student minor in Hispanic Studies)
- Jolene Lessard (recent graduate , English; doing MA at University of Sherbrooke)
- Emerald MacIsaac (double Major in English and Education)
- Markayza Mitchell (second-year Sociology student)
- Eva Rachert (third-year English Literature Honours student)
- Promise Rocheleau (second-year Education)
- Leea Rebeca Ruta (fourth-year Liberal Arts and History with Honours)
- Solomia Salameh (third-year Business Management student, minors in Entrepreneurship and PreLaw)
- Artur Shut (recent graduate, English and History)
- Naaz Sidhu (fourth-year Sociology major from KPU; going to U of Glasgow for an MA)
Bio: Dr. Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square is an Assistant Professor (LTA) in the Department of English at Bishop’s University. She received her PhD in English literature from the University of Oxford, after which she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manitoba and a Research Affiliate with the UM Institute for the Humanities. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to fiction, imagination, empathy, and social and environmental justice, and the chapter she co-authored for the Routledge Handbook of Health and Media, “Climate Health Is Human Health: Working Through Eco-Anxiety with the Written Word in Print and Digital Media,” was published in August 2022. Bryn is also an editor for Epilogue magazine and The Journal of Wellness and co-hosts The Brains & Banter Podcast. She will be presenting a paper on nature and consciousness in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights at the International Conference on Romanticism in Detroit in October 2023.
25 сен 2024
