P888 Intensive Seminar | Building an Altar: Teaching as Mutual Veneration

Abstract

In “P888 Intensive Seminar: Building an Altar—Teaching as Mutual Veneration,” Christine J. Hong reimagines the classroom as a sacred altar and portal where teaching and learning become acts of mutual veneration rather than hierarchical exchange. Framed as a creative course syllabus, the essay extends altar-building metaphors—candles, incense, water, names, offerings, and blessings—to illuminate learning outcomes, texts, assignments, community, and assessment. Hong articulates a decolonial pedagogy in which teachers and students meet as co-creators of knowledge, accountable to ancestors, communities, and Land. The classroom becomes a liminal, non-linear space where the living and the dead learn together and where transformation is reciprocal. Ultimately, she invites educators to see syllabus design and pedagogy as sacred, relational practices grounded in love, accountability, and shared blessing.