Enhancing Student Engagement Through an Embodied Humanities Approach to Teaching

Grant program: Amundsen Fellowship Program

Grant recipient: Leith Davis, Department of English

Project team: Teddie Brock, research assistant

Timeframe: January 2021 to January 2022

Funding: $5,000

Course addressed: ENGL 820 – Studies in Print Culture Theory

Description: During the tenure of my Amundsen Fellowship, I will explore theories, methodologies and best practices connected to what I am calling “Embodied Humanities” (EH). I wish to find out how Embodied Humanities approaches can be used to boost student engagement in humanities subjects, build connections between instructors from different disciplines and different institutions, and also to work against the divide between humanities and science/technology courses.

The phenomenal success of my first Embodied Humanities course in Fall, 2019 (“Engaging Students in Eighteenth-Century Literature Through A Scribal Culture Media Lab”) was a “eureka” moment for me, changing how I think about teaching and learning. The Amundsen Fellowship will give me an opportunity to define the theoretical constructs of what I am calling Embodied Humanities and share the ideas with other instructors at SFU and other institutions.

I have identified a number of individual instructors at SFU who already employ or are interested in employing EH methodologies; I have also already reached out to several faculty in other institutions (UBC, U of New York at Stony Brook and Swarthmore U) who have expressed interest in the project. The goal of the project is to further develop a cohort of instructors at SFU who employ Embodied Humanities approaches and to connect those instructors with colleagues at other institutions worldwide.

Questions addressed:

• What constitutes an EH approach?
• What do instructors who already use EH (or those who are interested in using EH methodologies) at SFU and at other institutions understand about the benefits of the approach and what methodologies do they already employ?
  
• How does using EH methodologies enhance student engagement in courses of instructors who are part of the network?
  
• How can a network of practitioners of EH methodologies at SFU and worldwide serve to further promote the methodologies?

Knowledge sharing: During the Spring 2021 semester, I will work with my research assistant to create a working definition of EH; a summary on research on EH; a bibliography of EH-related materials; and a student survey that can be used by colleagues to measure student engagement in their EH courses.

In May 2021, I will organize a remote symposium to share the materials and to invite attendees to participate in the data collection process by using surveys that we have created to measure the impact of their EH-enhanced courses in Summer and Fall, 2021. The data will be presented at a roundtable to be held in Spring 2022 at which instructors present their experiences and findings.

I would like to include a number of non-SFU faculty in the project as participants. They will participate in both symposia. My research assistant and I will also submit proposals to present the findings at national and international conferences and we will co-write an article to submit to an academic journal.