From Instrumentalization to Intellectualization: Response to Silent Scripts and Contested Spaces

Our response to Melanie Harris, Carolyn Medine, and Helen Rhee’s roundtable introduction on their experiences as women of color in the religious studies classroom is mediated by our own experiences as women of color within a country (South Africa) where people of color are the majority population and yet remain a minority within the academy.1 Our response must also be seen within a higher education context that is increasingly “massifi ed” by the demands of a neoliberal global paradigm that seeks to “instrumentalize” knowledge production under the guise of such terms as social utility. Furthermore, knowledge production within this massifi ed context is linked to funding, thus providing the “hard sciences” with decided and increasing advantages over the human and social sciences. The experiences that inform our refl ections derive from a master’s program funded by the Church of Sweden in three African countries (Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Africa). Our refl ections are restricted to our teaching and research supervision experiences within the two South African institutions: Stellenbosch University and University of KwaZulu-Natal. The master’s program is contained within an academic network that focuses on gender, religion/ theology, and sexual and reproductive health rights and is called the Gender, Religion, and Health (GRH) Program. The Church of Sweden identifi ed that the lack of access to sexual and reproductive health rights, which the United Nations articulated in its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) three, four, and fi ve, was a result of religious and cultural beliefs, and faith leaders’ authorities in this area. We both work in the program, which commenced in 2013 and will continue until 2017. Each year, we enroll ten new master’s students who focus on the interface of sexual and reproductive health rights and religion in their core classes as well as in their thesis research. The program is consciously transdisciplinary in its pedagogy and research practice (due to the intersection of cognate disciplines of gender, religion, and health), hence it draws on a wide range of teaching expertise from the disciplines of sociology of religion, health, education, and of course, religion and theology.