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On March 20, 2025, Global Humanities lecturer Jason Brown invited visual artist and calligrapher to his HUM 204 classroom for an Arabic calligraphy workshop. Earlier in the term, students were also given the opportunity to attend a Japanese calligraphy workshop off-campus. To Brown, these workshops introduced the art of writing to his students by taking them beyond the text itself and into the history and technique of text-making.

HUM 204: Great Religious Texts is a study of key works influencing major religious traditions, texts that illustrate core elements in the religious understanding of human life and its relationship to the sacred. The course explores the origin of the written word and meaning of sacred texts in all their forms (for example, the idea that, for many Indigenous peoples, the land itself is a kind of sacred text). Students of HUM 204 and Brown’s other religious studies courses are encouraged to engage with and understand the perspectives of various religious traditions, and to do so on their own terms. For HUM 204 specifically, students learn to consider the role of writing in their own lives and critically interpret, reflect on, and compare sacred texts across religious and literary traditions.

To instantiate the materiality of texts, one of the course’s educational goals, Brown utilizes experiential learning opportunities such as the calligraphy workshops:

“I really want to engage students in the world around them, not just ideas but tangible things. So, in reading texts, I wanted to engage students in text-making. The purpose of the calligraphy workshops was to familiarize students with the aesthetics of text-making. HUM 204 is about Great religious texts, so I wanted to give them a sense of what goes into creating a text and the power and beauty of language and words.”

The calligraphy workshops, therefore, serve as a vehicle transporting students beyond their readings of primary texts and regular in-class lectures, adding value to their learning experience. This is evident in the student testimonials:

With the success of these workshops, Brown says the following when asked if he plans to continue incorporating experiential learning in other/future courses:

“The big thing I assign are field journals. So, for HUM 130, I often schedule field trips at the end of the term and assign students to visit a religious service during the term. For my course on trees: a sit spot, for the one on birds: birding trips (and a class field trip), and for the Death and Dying course: community service. For the course on mystics, I do ‘a Monk for a month’ journal where students choose three non-sectarian practices to engage in over several weeks. I would love to do more arts-based skill workshops in the future as well.”

Brown, who values personal contemplation of course topics and the practicality of a humanities education in his pedagogy, is among likeminded colleagues in a department that encourages and facilitates initiatives that enhance a student’s educational journey. Members of the department, when possible, frequently explore opportunities outside of traditional learning: Alessandra Capperdoni took her HUM 106 class to the in Fall 2022, Spyros Sofos organized a HUM 101W class exhibition of student field work in their communities in Fall 2023, Evan Freeman visited the inaugural “Artist in Residence” exhibit at the Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology with his HUM 222 students in Spring 2024, and most recently in Spring 2025, Adrian Ivakhiv held a HUM 325 showcase of student creative projects (writing and multi-media) that explore the relationship between the arts, the natural world, and the ecological crisis.