Susan Hickman
What Shelley Rabinovitch finds most inspiring about teaching women’s and religious studies at the University of Ottawa is the idea that she is broadening minds. To watch that “Really? Wow! look on a first-year student’s face when the penny drops on a topic” is a thrill, she says.
Recipient of the University of Ottawa Part-Time Professor of the Year Award 2006, Rabinovitch was recognized in Maclean’s’ annual report on Canadian universities in 2005 and 2006 as one of the most popular professors at the University of Ottawa. She was a finalist for the 2003 Capital Educators’ Award. In 2002, she was voted Best Professor on Campus by the University’s student newspaper, The Fulcrum.
For the past 15 years, Rabinovitch has shared her knowledge about witchcraft, contemporary religion, women’s spirituality in alternative religions, and Amerindian and Inuit myths as a guest lecturer in the United States and across Canada, and predominantly with undergraduate students at the University of Ottawa. Her first-year course, “Witchcraft, Magic and Occult Phenomena,” is so popular that it has grown from a one-semester-per-year class with 90 students to one of more than 400 students, offered three times per year.
Since earning her doctorate degree in religious studies from the University in 2001, Rabinovitch has co-edited the Encyclopaedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism, co-written An Ye Harm None: Magical Morality and Modern Ethics, and contributed to the Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. She is currently working on a three-volume revised guide to gods and goddesses expected to be released in 2007, and negotiating with another publisher to serve as editor-in-chief of a series of books for undergraduates, featuring North American Aboriginal cultures.
Rabinovitch believes she has been able to bring her passion for historical re-enactment, her years of studying poetry with the late famous Canadian poet Irving Layton, her experience as a broadcast journalist, and her involvement in improvisational comedy theatre to her teaching.
“One of my strongest talents,” she admits, “is an ability to keep more than 400 students’ attention on my lectures by using humour and inclusive examples.” She adds, “You can no longer assume in this day and age that your students are Christian, nor that they will even recognize imagery drawn from the Tanakh (Old Testament) or New Testament. I have had Zoroastrians and Hindus in class, as well as Anglicans and United Church members. To hear their examples in a discussion make them both feel included and understood.”
Rabinovitch is known on campus as “the crazy witchcraft teacher,” as well as “a gifted and understanding storyteller,” and a charismatic, dedicated and open-minded professor who cares deeply about and respects her students.
Says one of her first-year students, “She speaks with zest and a priceless sense of humour. Her enthusiastic energy has students hanging off her every word.”
“Ideally,” Rabinovitch admits, “I would like to offer courses that expand the creativity and curiosity of my students. I want them to question, to synthesize, and to hunger for answers to questions no one has asked before.”
Professor Rabinovitch will deliver a public lecture on November 28, at 7:30 p.m., in the Alumni Auditorium.
