Kenny Paul Smith
Ogden Honors College Fellow Senior Instructor of Religious Studies Louisiana State University
Kenny Paul Smith earned his PhD at Emory University in 2018, though he has been working as an instructor of religious studies and philosophy since January 1999. He serves as Senior Instructor of Religious Studies and Ogden Honors College Fellow at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. For good or bad, each of his courses (like his research) ultimately recur to religion, spirituality, and paranormal/transpersonal experience in the contemporary American context.
Teaching the Superhumanities: Some Modest Reflections
Kenny Paul Smith’s thinking and writing about the paranormal (the Super dimension of life), and thus his contribution to what we presently refer to as the Superhumanities, has been thus far shaped primarily by his day-to-day job over the past quarter century: teaching massive course loads in the classrooms of large STEM-oriented research universities. Such efforts take several forms: (i) building the Super into his existing courses (e.g., Religions of the World, American Religions); (ii) building out entirely new courses focused primarily upon the Super (e.g., Magic and Religion, Religion and other Worlds, etc.,); (iii) offering advanced students opportunities to explore and develop their own thinking about the Super beyond the level of course assignments (e.g., at student symposia, university-wide events, and at a recently launched student-driven e-zine, Paranormal Culture); and (iv) strategizing with students as to how they forge the Clark Kent/Superwoman/Superman identify required to succeed in our deeply disenchanted institutions. This brief talk touches upon a range of observations derived from such experience.