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.
Religion & Ecology Early-Career Scholars (REECS) is a new international and interdisciplinary reading group that aims to create a network of connection and support for early-career scholars (loosely defined as those working on their dissertations to pre-tenured faculty) working in the field of religion and ecology (broadly defined). Meetings will take place on Zoom and any interested early-career scholar in religion and ecology is invited to join.
This week's episode of the Forum on Religion and Ecology podcast welcomes back Kimberly Carfore, PhD. She discusses some of the strategies and practices she has used for teaching nature immersion classes online during the pandemic, including nature awareness practices, meditations, and reskilling. Although teaching nature immersion online sounds like a contradiction in terms, she discusses some of the unique opportunities it affords as well.
You can learn more about her work through her organization, Ecozoa...
For some of us, huddled under heavy blankets of snow, isolated from others, the winter seems particularly deep and thick this year. In these times, poems—like the following excerpt from the longer poem One Note—are like a flame we tend deep in our burrows to stay warm until the time comes to emerge. If you can find the fortitude to sing loud now, go! Don’t hide your passion and your light. If you’re...
This week's episode of Spotlights features Jason Brown, PhD., lecturer in the Humanities and the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. He talks about his research and teaching with trees and forests at the intersection of religion, anthropology, and ecology, including some strategies for teaching online. He also discusses his engagement with photography as an ecological and contemplative practice.
You can learn more...
We’ve just redone the “About Us” area of the Forum website to make the information easier to find, and we wanted to share a bit about the changes to help you navigate this new section!
All of the information has been reorganized into these new categories:
Who we are: Here you’ll find information on Our Directors, Our Team, the Forum...
This week’s episode of Spotlights features Timothy Harvie, PhD, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Ethics and Program Coordinator of Social Justice and Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University in Calgary, Alberta. He talks about his work with eco-theology, animals, evolution, and philosophical foundations for the study of religion and ecology. He also discusses some of his writing projects, including the anthology of personal and theological reflections on animals, Encountering Earth: Thinking...
This week, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is holding the Fourth Halki Summit online, due to the global pandemic. The theme this year is “COVID-19 and Climate Change: Living with and Learning from a Pandemic.”
The summit consists of three webinars:
...
This episode of Spotlights features Susan Bratton, PhD, a Professor at Baylor University in the Department of Environmental Science. She talks about her work at the intersection of religion and environmental ethics, particularly in light of her exciting new book, Religion and the Environment: An Introduction, which provides a thorough and thoughtful introduction to the field. This new introductory text covers the...
Today, we wanted to share some stories of hope for the environmental efforts around the world.
First, check out this story from Common Dreams, where they highlight a number of positive environmental achievements that happened during 2020. These include increased recognition of the importance of Indigenous land protection and Indigenous women's leadership; improvements in technology–both renewable energy and environmental monitoring; an increase in the number of conservation areas around the...
This week's episode of Spotlights features Elizabeth McAnally, PhD, the newsletter editor and website manager for the Forum on Religion and Ecology. She discusses her work for the Forum and gives an overview of her book, Loving Water Across Religions: Contributions to an Integral Water Ethic (Orbis Books, 2018). We also discuss her ecologically oriented practices of yoga and Chinese internal arts (e.g., taiji and qigong). You can learn more at her personal website here: https://integraltaiji....