Blog
Welcome to the new Yale Forum Blog!
We will be sharing a variety of original content including interviews, reviews, reports from the field, new and enhanced resources on the Forum website, content from our new video podcast series, FORE Spotlights, and much more.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new content.
The 5th Annual James Sawers Jr. Interfaith Speaker Series will be held on March 3-5, 2022, and the keynote speakers this year are Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. The events will be held in-person at the College of Charleston (various locations) and the Unitarian Church in Charleston (4 Archdale St.). But these events will also be accessible online via Zoom. It is free and open to all.
On March 3...
This week’s episode of Spotlights features Madeline Stevens, a graduate student in the Environmental Studies program at the University of Montana. She talks about the interdisciplinary work being done in her program as well as her personal and professional engagement with the intersection of religion and the environment, including the thesis she is completing on the relationship between faith and environmental education. We talk about the relationship between science and religion, Evangelical Christianity, curriculum development, personal transformation,...
The Call for Proposals for the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting in Denver is out, and the deadline to submit your paper or panel is March 1. So, we wanted to provide some details on the calls that relate to the intersection of religion and ecology. This year's theme is “Religion and Catastrophe.” General instructions on how to submit can be found here on the AAR site.
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This week's episode of Spotlights features Aaron Weiss, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. He talks about Tibetan Buddhism and philosophical perspectives on place, particularly in light of his recently defended dissertation, Buddhist Topology and the Practice of Lama Orgyan Khandro Norlha. Along the way, he also discusses questions of translation, cultural appropriation, and the complex challenges and responsibilities facing scholar-...
February is Black History Month in the United States. So, we at the Forum wanted to highlight some of the resources from our new religiously-engaged Ecojustice hub that focus on the history and pivotal role of African Americans in the birth and growth of the Ecojustice movement, as well as material addressing the disproportionate impact of environmental concerns on black...
In this week’s episodes of Spotlights, our host Sam Mickey discusses some of his work in the field of religion and ecology. While we normally put the spotlight on other academics, activists, and artists, some people have asked to hear more about the host’s perspective on things, so in this episode Sam discusses one of his books, On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (Rowman & Littlefield). Published in 2014, the questions and problems that book engages are still relevant to today’s...
In honor of the start of the lunar new year this week, we offer an excerpt from Chinese poet, Hsieh Hui-Lien's masterpiece, “Snow Fu.”
…White feathers too are white
But lightness is their special nature.
White jade too is white
But stubbornly it guards the chaste hardness of its form.
Neither can match this snow
That comes into being and melts away with the season.
When the dark yin freezes, its purity stays unsullied,
But when the warm sun rises,...
This week, Spotlights features a clip from our episode with Johnna Arnold, an artist, photographer, educator, and urban farmer based in Oakland, CA. In this clip, she discusses her meditation-based participatory art project, Expanding Space, which is currently on exhibit as part of Creative Attention: Art and Community Restoration at the Palo Alto Art Center, in Palo Alto, California.
Details for the full episode can be found here.
You can watch the episode below or listen to it here.
An archive...
News has been traveling around the globe that Buddhist teacher and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh passed away this week at the age of 95. He touched deeply the lives of so many worldwide, including all of us here at the Forum. We have spent these last days deep in appreciation for all he brought to this world.
His 7-day memorial ceremony is currently underway. The full memorial schedule is here, and portions of it are being live-streamed via the Lang Mai YouTube channel. Photos of the past day's ceremonies can be found...
This week's episode of Spotlights features Johnna Arnold, an artist, photographer, educator, and urban farmer based in Oakland, CA. Her work revolves around human beings, the environments we build, and the ways these systems affect our lives. She discusses her personal and professional journey toward the intersection of art and ecology, including a body of photographic prints that work with used motor oil, expressing the dynamics of the Capitalocene. It is extra special to have her on the podcast, since many of our videos (including...