Transformations: The World Religions Survey through an Adjunct Feminist Lens Alison Downie Indiana University of Pennsylvania Abstract. This essay describes a transformation in my experience as an adjunct teaching underprepared students from one of shame toward a desire to assert the value of this work. Insights from my feminist theological training helped me to affirm the importance of encouraging transformative learning in teaching the academically marginalized and prompted my analysis of student writing in an introductory World Religions course, in order to determine whether or not the course was a site of transformative learning. I argue that despite many contextual limitations, the movement toward deepening self-awareness and increasing openness to religious diversity seen in student writing demonstrates that transformative learning began in this course, and that is valuable for students’ lives whether or not they are academically successful. To learn is to face transformation. – Parker Palmer In their typology of the scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion, Killen and Gallagher (2013) identify six genres, two of which are the “Personal/ Confessional/Vocational,” which proceeds from the assumption that “insight comes from reflection on the experience and person of the teacher” (116) and the “Show andTell,” which “attempts to identify precisely why a particular teaching strategy did or did not work as anticipated” (115). This essay embeds elements of the “Show and Tell” genre regarding a particular world religions survey course within the larger framework of a personal narrative which sketches my adjunct identity and the challenge of teaching large lecture classes of at-risk students enrolled in a state university. 1 The “Show and Tell” aspect of the essay follows the personal narrative because my pedagogical reflection arose out of and is inseparable from an intense struggle of many years with adjunct shame. Wrestling with this shame became a transformative process for me which, eventually, empowered me to affirm the worth of my work by researching a sample course and writing this essay. I am thankful to the hundreds of students who, simply by being themselves and enrolling in classes I was fortunate to teach, were cata- lysts for my pedagogical and theological self-examination and growth. The transforma- tion I went through helped me see the value of my work with these students in a different way. I explore in this essay how I reoriented my world religions course to provide opportunities for greater personal engagement by students, encouraging their 1 I thank the members of the College Theology Society (CTS) for the informal feedback many pro- vided on my preliminary work with this material at the 2013 CTS Annual Conference. I am also indebted to anonymous reviewers and editor Tom Pearson for helping me to bring more order and clarity to these reflections. ARTICLES © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Teaching Theology & Religion, Volume 18, Issue 3, July 2015 193