Academia from the Inside

Book excerpt: This book invites readers to explore how fourteen different experts in their respective fields create deeper meaning in their profession and work with students through thinking, in multiple ways, about the self who teaches, the self who learns, and the ways in which these selves interact within the academy. Essays in this book explore the “inside” of academia through three themes: Pursuing Authenticity, Creating Creative Community, and Humanizing Education. Contributors reflect on their own lived experiences in the academy and on pedagogies that they have created for their students. Embodied education, the theoretical framework of this book, draws on ideas of educators Parker Palmer from the West and Dr. Chinmay Pandya from the East, emerging through contributors’ collaborative work. In embodied education, teachers and learners share experiences that lead to self-understanding and together find ways to humanize spaces in academia.