Igniting Imagination: Adam Bond

Adam Bond, PhD is Associate Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Baylor University. 

Teaching to unlock new abilities to see. Imagining new futures, building new worlds, seeing new possibilities can be incorporated into our classrooms if teachers can unshackle their own creativity. Bond reflects on a recent Wabash cohort experience which challenged participants to move past nostalgia and toward the challenge of shaping of new futures.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
Welcome to Dialogue on Teaching, Wabash Center's
podcast series.
I am Nancy Lynn Westfield,Director of the Wabash Center.
Paul Myrie is our soundengineer.
It is my pleasure to welcome tothe conversation Dr.
Adam Bond.
Dr.
Bond is Associate Professor ofReligion and African American
Studies in the Department ofReligion with Baylor University.

(00:28):
Thank you, Adam, for being here.
Hello.
Oh,

SPEAKER_01 (00:31):
hello.
Thank you so much for theinvitation to join you at the
table.
I'm grateful to speak with youon this day.

SPEAKER_00 (00:40):
So you and I were recently in a conversation on
imagination and future buildingor world building.
So Willie Jennings and Igathered several faculty people
together to talk about thenotion of futuring, the notion
of using imagination in times oftrouble to imagine a different

(01:03):
future.
response to trouble, to imaginetrouble in a different way, to
imagine new futures.
So I'm just going to say, Ithought the conversation was
terrific, right?
It was wonderful.
So I want to know what youthought about it.
But then more importantly, howdid it affect your teaching?
How did it affect, you know,were you able to take any of the

(01:24):
pieces back into your ownclassroom or back into your own
teaching life?

SPEAKER_01 (01:29):
Yes.
So I want to start by applaudingyou and Willie Jennings for
really creating that space forus, for inviting the diverse
group of people.
We had an amazing time sharingin conversation, really thinking
about the kinds of futures thatwe want to welcome, that we want

(01:53):
to invite, that we want to worktowards as a part of our sense
of call, our sense of vocation.
So thank you so much forinviting me to be a part of that
group and that experience.
What I took back with me interms of into the classroom was

(02:13):
something that I believe we allought to have as a part of our
understanding of what it meansto be a teacher, and that is
that our imaginations can reallyinform the work we do in the
classroom, that we don't have tobe restricted to traditional
notions of how we prep for whatwe present and the ways in which

(02:38):
we invite our students intodeeper reflection and into
deeper sharing, that wediscover, I think, within our
ways to reconnect to not just asense of wonder that we might
not have really felt orappreciated in these adult years

(03:00):
that we had once as children,but that right now we can really
tap into a sense of self thatallows us to see ways in which
we can build worlds, buildfutures, that we can participate
in dialogues, that really inviteus to imagine anew what the

(03:26):
world can be.
And so that was powerful.
I came home and I immediatelytold my family.
I said, boy, that experienceunlocked something in me.
And I can't go back now.
I mean, I feel like I have threenovels in me.
I feel like I have...
You know, some new classroomexercises.

(03:49):
I feel like I have just some newways of seeing how I can do my
work well.
So I really am grateful for thatopportunity to be a part of that
workshop.

SPEAKER_00 (04:01):
There's something, so Willie Jennings and I are
working on the notion of seeing,just what you said.
Who is a scholar who sees?
Who is a scholar who's theartist, right?
So to say we're kindling orrekindling the ability to see
anew is so exciting to mebecause for many of us, either

(04:21):
the doctoral program orcitizenship in the institution
has foreclosed on our ability tosee or foreclosed on our ability
to think of and imagine newfutures.
We just kind of accept that howthings are and used to be will
be how things continue and willbe, but in the same

(04:44):
contradictory moment as changeis all around us.

SPEAKER_01 (04:47):
Yes, yes.
So I remember well the veryfirst question I think I asked
when we entered the roomtogether.
And that was, how do wereconcile the tension between
nostalgia and imagining thesenew futures, building these new
worlds?

(05:08):
Because in many ways, we've beenso informed by the past and
we're not necessarily alwayssure what to do with the lessons
of the past other than talkabout the ways in which, boy,
those were the good old days.
And so when I think about eventhis moment in higher education,

(05:31):
in some ways we have colleagues,we have departments, we have
institutions as a whole thatwish things were like they used
to be when the world keepssaying, no, we're not going
back.
And so you can try to live thereif you want, but you're going to
be left behind.
On the personal level, it'slike, okay, the students that I

(05:57):
have are not going to be thestudents that I was when I was
in seminary and grad school andundergrad.
There are phones, there aredevices all around us.
And so we can't go back.
And so imagining that new usesfor those devices, imagining new

(06:18):
ways for students to engage inlight of the current
environment, the current eventsof the world.
Those are all platforms, so tospeak, for us to become better
teachers.
Those are all ways in which Ithink it is important for us to
acknowledge where we are, butlike you said, see what it is we

(06:42):
can still become.
and or dare I say should becomeif we want to make those kinds
of ethical moves in terms of theway we teach.

SPEAKER_00 (06:53):
So I thought your question about nostalgia and the
future of nostalgia right nowwas like right on target.
I thought that question gatheredup the reticence and the
hesitation in the room, right?
I thought you articulated whatmany of our colleagues were
thinking.
And even thinking, even pushingit Further than that, saying

(07:14):
with my commitment of getting aPhD, I am now owed or have the
privilege of keeping things thesame because I finally got here
and now it's going to beupended.
We don't have any control overthat, right?
Yes, it has been upended, right?
You do it.
You don't have the privilegethat scholars have had in the

(07:35):
past in the larger society.
But then I also thought, becausewe invited Clint Fluker, who's
an archivist at EmoryUniversity, to come in.
And Clint told us, as well asled us in activities, to say,
you can't think about the futurewithout thinking about the past,
right?
So Clint took the nostalgia awayand gave us good memories and

(07:57):
tech and and artifacts andmemory as technology for the
future not just romanticizing ornostalgicizing the past

SPEAKER_01 (08:07):
yes

SPEAKER_00 (08:07):
what was that move

SPEAKER_01 (08:08):
like for

SPEAKER_00 (08:08):
you

SPEAKER_01 (08:09):
oh so that move was amazing and and this is why i
want to say that as a historianyou know I spend so much time in
the archives.
I tell my 17-year-old daughterthat my call is to speak with
the ancestors on a daily basisin order to understand not just

(08:30):
the world in which they live,but the world that they imagine
for us.
And so in light of those kindsof ways of understanding my
work, for this amazing archivistand historian in his own right
to come in and say the past isnot just prologue, but it is an

(08:53):
opportunity to leverage the wayswe walk into the future was
just, one, affirming, but two,powerful in terms of, yes, this
is why I do this work, and thisis what these resources can
provide for us.
So I loved...
his activities, then I hope thathe didn't trademark them because

(09:15):
I want to at least try to dosome work

SPEAKER_00 (09:18):
with those.
I had the same impulse, right?
I wrote down as much about howhe did what he taught than what
he taught.
So, yeah.
Tell our listeners what he did.
Tell them the activity.

SPEAKER_01 (09:29):
So, I mean, a part of his activity was, and I hope
I'm not spoiling it for the nextgroup he's going to encounter,
was that he gave us thesescenarios in which we are people
from the future who who live ina society and live in a dystopia
that requires, if things aregoing to change, that requires
that we go back to the past tosee what resources can help us

(09:54):
transform that present momentthat we just left into the world
that we believe it should be.
And so he had all of theseresources that he placed for
each of the groups that heworked with, in front of us so
that we could then see so one ofthe things for us was we had a
quincy jones album we had thisposter from a conference on on

(10:20):
on black on the black world thisinternational conference on the
black world and so we wereinterpreting what do these
resources how can they help uswhat what are the technologies
um in terms of using theseresources that can make Help us
make the world better when wereturn.
And that was, I mean, that wasso powerful because we don't

(10:40):
look at the archives that way.
And I think as historian, as ahistorian, that yes, those are
the kinds of resources and it'snot just words.
is what they point us to.
It is the artifacts, thematerials that they left behind
for us that might point us in adirection that can tell us for,

(11:02):
and please forgive me for myEnglish, but it ain't got to be
this way.
And so from that, what then canwe learn that can help us
transform the world into thatwhich we desire?
I like to use the phrase, and Ihope it caught on a little bit
when I was serving as a pastorin a local congregation, but I
like to use the phrase, how canwe move the world in the right

(11:25):
direction?
And by that, I meant from thepulpit, and I still mean, how
can we move the world in thedirection of love?
And I think that is a part ofthe question that that i like to
answer as a historian going backinto the archives and so i was
really grateful for clintfluker's um activity and i again
i'm workshopping that into whati think it can do for students

(11:49):
in my classroom

SPEAKER_00 (11:50):
there was a way that as we were handling the literal
materials that he gave us rightthe cookbooks the album covers
the posters, all the differentliteral artifacts that he gave
us, that I felt us begin to havea new sense of agency about the
stories that would build ourfuture, right?

(12:12):
That the exercise itself, to me,instilled agency.
Would you use the word agency?
You know what I mean?
There was something thathappened within the group that
was empowering.
I didn't anticipate working witharchives as being an empowering
moment.

SPEAKER_01 (12:26):
Yes, yes.
Well...
See, and I'm not going to talkabout you.
I think it's because you're nota historian.
I

SPEAKER_00 (12:33):
am not.
And I usually don't work withmaterial culture in those ways,
but I'm interested now.

SPEAKER_01 (12:39):
Yes.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
It was empowering.
It was a moment that reallycalled on us to embrace that
sense of agency.
And what the groups did inreturn in terms of when we came
back to have the largerconversation and groups shared

(12:59):
what they talked through andexperienced in working through
that assignment.
I mean, you just saw people comealive and become energized with,
I mean, really the power ofimagination.
And so that was, I mean, thatwas just an experience.
And so I wanna go back tothanking you because you and

(13:21):
Willie curated, I think, and Iuse that word in so many ways
because you all took us to anart museum as well.
And so, or an art, oh, I can'tremember.
Gallery, we went to a gallery.
Our gallery, excuse me, in ourgallery.
And just, I mean, we wereimmersed in ways in which people

(13:46):
see the world differently,right?
And so that gave us permission.
Those spaces that you put us inand those conversations that you
convened were just so wonderfulin helping us tap into our own

(14:06):
sense of imagination.
I mean, even the way you startedthe whole process.
I mean, we received from you allright from the start Ruha
Benjamin's book, Imagination, amanifesto.
And that work pushed the readerto make sense of the things that

(14:27):
make us say, that ought to leadus to say, it ain't got to be
this way.
And so those, the wholeexperience was just, for lack of
a better phrase, it was a momentof transformation.

SPEAKER_00 (14:44):
So we took very seriously the need to
collaborate beyond our academicdisciplines.
So we went to the Black Arts inAmerica gallery run by Najee
Dorsey in Atlanta.
And Najee brought threecolleagues, three artists, to
talk about how they depict andimagine art, I mean, the future

(15:04):
in their artwork.
So each of those artists broughtpieces of art and carefully told
us what what future they weredepicting and why, how they
imagined the future.
So this is the thing thatstopped me in my tracks, Adam,
was it sounded like the sameconversation we were having
among scholars of religion andtheology when we were talking to

(15:25):
the artists.
It was uncanny the way theytalked about the future was
almost exactly the same way wewere struggling with and
challenged to depict the future.

SPEAKER_01 (15:37):
Yes, yes.
The conversation itself helpedme see, one, or helped me feel a
sense of solidarity with Blackcreatives, with creatives in
general, but with Blackcreatives in particular, as to

(16:00):
how they depicted the world thatthey want to see in their art,
the world as is and the worldthat they want to see.
it got me thinking just in termsof my scholarship that on some
level, yes, I'm writing aboutthe past, but I'm writing about

(16:21):
the past in order to help peoplethink about the world that we
want to see.
And so the ways they weretalking about it, I mean, we had
conversations that one artist,really, on some level, began to

(16:41):
talk about the ethics ofplagiarism.
The

SPEAKER_00 (16:46):
use of artificial

SPEAKER_01 (16:47):
intelligence in his life.
The use of artificialintelligence.
And those conversations areconversations that we're having
in the academy.
And so it was eerie on somelevel that we're all thinking
about some similar questions,but at the same time, it was...
powerful from the standpoint ofwe do need to have some

(17:11):
cross-disciplinary,interdisciplinary,
cross-disciplinary conversationsand transgress the boundaries of
what we call scholarship toallow for us to engage with
larger publics that can help usthink about our own work, but we
can also help them think abouttheir work.
So it was a great, it was agreat moment for us.

(17:34):
And I loved how pretty much allof the participants in our group
were able to just really findsome insights from that panel.
One, but some even were corneredby the artists because the
conversations were so rich andso meaningful.
And some of the dialogue thatskewed into, that teetered into

(17:57):
debate was just that life-givingon some level.

SPEAKER_00 (18:04):
Well, and the piece of the conversation after the
conversation that I heard waswhen one artist was still
challenging the other artistsbecause they disagreed about, it
wasn't a scholar disagreeingwith the artists.
It was two artists debatingabout the use of AI in artwork.
And one was what I would call apurist saying, I would never use

(18:24):
AI in my work.
And the other one's saying, whynot?
it's still my work, right?
And it sounded like what we talkabout all the time in terms of
writing.
I mean, our medium is usuallywords and writing.
They were talking about paintsand sculpture and those kinds of
things, but the questions werestill the same.

SPEAKER_01 (18:42):
Still the same, still the same.
And I mean, we could even justgo beyond AI and just think
about Well, I mean, we can stayin the realm, but think about
the uses of technology in theclassroom.
There might be some puristvoices who question how much
technology we really need to beeffective teachers and to invite

(19:07):
students into deeper meaningthrough traditional modes of
engagement and delivery.
And or you have the quoteunquote new school, if we were
to talk in the language of hiphop, old school, new school, and
you could talk about the ways inwhich people have really
introduced technology as ateaching tool in ways that we

(19:34):
would not have even imaginedmaybe even five to 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 (19:39):
So this conversation, so you have
confided in me that thisconversation on imagination
didn't surface because I suspectit's always been there.
You are now interested inwriting novels, or at least
you're reporting to the publicand not just keeping it private
that you are a historian, ascholar of religion and history

(20:00):
who's now embarking on novelwriting.
So tell us about writing novels,Adam.

SPEAKER_01 (20:06):
Well, so I'll just say this.
Sitting at the table with one ofthe activities that you all had
us do in terms of writing astory, there were no limits on
the kind of story we could telland so on and so forth.
We had magazines that we coulduse in terms of cutting out

(20:28):
images and pasting them andpresenting them as a part of our
story.
It took me back to fourth gradeand Mrs.
Navis's fourth grade elementaryschool class at West Ridge
Elementary in Racing, Wisconsin.
And it was one of those, oh,wow.

(20:51):
I mean, you're telling me I cando what?
And then to actually give myselfto the activity, I came up with
a short story that was, I mean,for me, such an eye-opening
experience in terms of, oh, Ihave this in me.

(21:12):
And there were words ofaffirmation and encouragement
that suggested to me that, oh,this is something.
Now, I mean, it was onlyprobably 500 to maybe 800 words.
I can't remember.
I don't even think I reached1,000.
I might have.
So I'm not saying that I'mColson Whitehead or anyone else.

(21:36):
But again, the activity allowedme to feel something that I have
not necessarily felt in othermodes of writing, at least over
the last decade or so frompulpit or the academy.

SPEAKER_00 (21:58):
So you are espousing, aspiring to write
these novels?

SPEAKER_01 (22:05):
I am open to potentially seeing where the
story that I did in Atlanta withyou, I'm curious where that can
go, or to where just the otherstories that I have in me might
go.
So I won't say I'm espousing oraspiring to just yet.

(22:26):
but I would say that I amcurious enough to explore it.

SPEAKER_00 (22:31):
And is that exploration a scholarly
exploration?
In doing that, have you leftscholarship to go into a new
realm and a new enterprise, ordoes it fold into your scholarly
enterprise?

SPEAKER_01 (22:49):
I think it folds into my scholarship in this way.
I think in as much as I canmaximize all that is running
around there in my mind, that itmight unlock some other things
that feed into the kinds ofscholarship that I do.

(23:09):
So since we are confessingsomething, I grew up reading
comics.
And so now even in their quoteunquote graphic novel form, I
still pick up several.
And I remember being deeplyinspired back in high school by
the work of the illustrators andwriters who helped produce the

(23:35):
Milestone label of comics.
The Milestone label was animprint within the larger quote
unquote DC Comics family withSuperman and Batman and all of
them.
But Milestone had this largeworld of comics
African-American, Latino, Latinasuperheroes who were doing their

(24:01):
things in ways that you wouldnot have seen Superman or Batman
do.
Stories that were not told inthe larger family of DC Comics.
And I remember feeling somesense of connection to the art,
to the stories, And it was inthat moment that I began to see

(24:26):
how creative I could be.
And so that kind of permission,so to speak, that was given by
way of seeing those images andseeing those stories, so much so
that after our time in Atlanta,I went out and looked to see

(24:47):
where those books have gone andwhatnot.
And they actually have a set ofcompendium that bring back those
stories.
And so I went out and boughtthem and said, let me read and
explore and see what I can learnfrom and how I can be immersed

(25:08):
back into these stories of worldbuilding.
And so that's Again, you kind ofopened up a door that I've been
willing to walk through as apart of the conversations that
we had.

SPEAKER_00 (25:22):
So the Wabash Center is starting a book series.
We're getting ready to animateit.
It's been on the burner for awhile.
We're bringing it forward calledArray, the Array book series.
And it'll be a multi-genre bookseries.
And I am hoping, hoping, hopingthat graphic novels are a part
of our book series.
So when we get theinfrastructure put together, I
mean, you can write for our bookseries anytime you want, Adam,

(25:44):
but if you give us a graphicnovel, I will be very, very
happy.
Just keep it in mind.
No, I'll keep it in mind.

SPEAKER_01 (25:54):
Yes.

SPEAKER_00 (25:55):
Thank you so much for this conversation.
Please come back anytime.

SPEAKER_01 (25:59):
Thank you.
It has been a real pleasure.
Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 (26:03):
To our listeners, the Wabash Center website is the
place.
Look on our website for detailsconcerning our hybrid workshops,
our writing colloquies androundtables, concerning
resources for teaching in theteaching life, including our
blogs and our journal onteaching, as well as our
re-granting program.
A special thanks to podcastproducer Rachel Mills and the

(26:23):
music which frames our podcastof the original composition of
Paul Murray.
Wabash Center for more than 30years is exclusively funded by
Lilly Endowment Incorporated.
And we are out.
How was that, Paul?