Past Reading Groups
The Universal House of Justice has set as a focus for the Association for Bahá’í Studies to create opportunities for the friends to build their capacity to contribute to discourses in professional and academic fields from a Bahá’í perspective. The need for this seems clearer every day.
As one initiative in this context, ABS is organizing several online reading groups. The purpose of a reading group is to encourage individuals connected to a given professional or academic discourse to engage thoughtfully and rigorously with important texts in a consultative environment that aims to increase their capacity to contribute to that discourse. It does so by meeting regularly over the course of a number of weeks to review selected readings and discuss their implications for understanding the discourse and the assumptions that underlie it. With the assistance of facilitators, the group strives to analyze the text(s) in light of the writings of the Faith, the experience of the community, and the conceptual framework that organizes the Bahá’í community’s efforts to transform society. Participation entails a commitment to reading the material and contributing to the consultation during the sessions.
(View our current reading groups here)
Past Reading Groups
Spring 2024:
Indigenous Studies Reading Group 4: True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change
Thinking About the Meaning of Technology: Media and the Self
Harnessing Technology: The Pursuit of Moderation
Polarization and High Conflict
Agriculture and the Environment
Arts: The Fashioner: Reflections on the Role of Music and the Arts in Building a Global Community by Jenina Lepard
Film, Value, and Ethics
Distilling Creativity
Revealing the Gems by Karen Reitz-Koncebovski
Winter 2024:
Indigenous Studies Reading Group Part 3: Indigenous Knowledge Programs in Public Education
The Role of Women in Society: Career & Family Life
Articulating a Baha’i Perspective about Technology & Society
Thinking about the Meaning of Technology: Ethics and Moral Life
Virtue, Freedom, and Community Insights from Influential Women Thinkers, Part 4: Simone de Beauvoir
A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision of Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality, by Ken Wilber
The Crisis of Identity in the Health Field and Exploring Frameworks that Promote Oneness and Unity
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Race in North America
Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? by Michael Sandel
Active Hope and the Strengths Within
Moving Toward an Economy of Well-Being
Toward a Political Constitution for the Pluralistic World Society
The Challenges to Protagonism in Development
Methodological Approaches to the Study of Religion within the Discipline of History: Part 3: The Reclamation of Religion in Modern Thought
Arts: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Fall 2023:
What We Can Save: A Deeper Dialogue on the Climate Crisis, Building Community around Solutions
Indigenous Studies 2: Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education
Agriculture and the Environment
Perspectives on Consciousness from the Philosophy of Language
Discourse on Diplomacy 3
Technology and Society 3: Thinking about the Meaning of Technology: History and Philosophy
One Planet, One Habitation: Study of the BIC Document and Evidence of Like-Minded Efforts in the Greater Community
Challenges to Protagonism in Development
Methodological Approaches to the Study of Religion within the Discipline of History: Part 2: An Inquiry into Response to Secularization Theory
Reinventing Organizations 2: Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux
Product-led Societal Transformation
Arts: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
The Modern Intellectual Tradition, Part 3: 20th Century
Spring 2023:
Indigenous Studies
Looking at Community Building from an Evolutionary Perspective: Contributions from Anthropology and Neuroscience
Just and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence 3
Diplomacy Discourse 2
Towards Vibrant Communities and Gardening
Urbanism: Neighbourhood & Community
Intellectual Tradition, Part 2: From German Idealism to Nietzsche
Winter 2023:
Discourses of Diplomacy: Identifying Correlations with Bahá’í Concepts
Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux
Just and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence 2
Methodological Approaches to the Study of Religion within the Discipline of History: An Examination of Religion and Speculative Approaches in the Works of Arnold Toynbee
The Role of Women in Society: An Exploration of Mothers as the First Educators, Equality, and Social Change
The Modern Intellectual Tradition, Part 1: From the Scientific Revolution to Immanuel Kant
The Nature of Work: Perspectives of Race, Gender, Education, and Justice
How To Feed The World edited by Jessica Eise and Ken Foster
Technology and Society 2
Speech/Language Pathology
Fall 2022:
Technology and Society I
Crisis and Opportunity: Towards a Vision of Sustainable Global Development
Historical and Philosophical Understanding of Complexity, Emergence, and Chaos
Virtue, Freedom, and Community: Insights from Influential Women Thinkers, Part 3: Iris Murdoch
Urbanism: Neighborhood and Community
Just and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence I
Nature of Work II: Work Won't Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe
Overcoming Material and Spiritual Barriers to Racial Unity: Reviewing The Sum of Us
Exploring the Discourse of Diplomacy I
Whiteness and Patriarchy: Weeding Out Barriers to Oneness, Cultivating Justice and Authenticity
How To Feed The World edited by Jessica Eise and Ken Foster
Food, Farmer, and Community: Agriculture and the Reconstruction of the World, by Winnona Merritt
Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
Investigations into Media, Knowledge, and Culture
Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience by Enrique Salmón
World Order in the Media
Adolescent Nutrition
Movements and Models in Music
Spring 2022:
World Citizenship as a Performative Revolutionary Act
Virtue, Freedom, and Community: Insights from Influential Women Thinkers, Part 2: Hannah Arendt
World Government Narratives
Chaos, Complexity, and the Natural/Human Sciences
Nature of Work I: Our Relationship to Work
Winter 2022:
Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat by Robert Paarlberg
Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners by James B. Nardi
Psychology of Social Change
News Articles on Climate and Agriculture
Fall 2021:
Reparations and Reconciliation
Freedom Farmers: Agriculture Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica White
Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
Virtue, Freedom, and Community: Insights from Influential Women Thinkers, Part 1—Simone Weil
Exploring the Role of Asian Pacific Islanders in Eradicating Anti-Blackness
Climate Crisis Narratives
Education for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization
Moral Empowerment: In Quest of a Pedagogy by Sona Arbab
Climate Change
Unbowed, A Memoir by Wangari Maathai
How to Feed the World edited by Jessica Eise and Ken Foster
Transdisciplinarity and the Intersection of Scientific and Spiritual/Religious Knowledge Systems in Public Health
Building Structural Competency in the Classroom and Clinical Setting
Examining Health Equity
Narrative and Ethics
Speculative Fiction
Storytelling and Cinema