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.
Before we launch into 2023 tackling and talking about the environmental issues that our world is facing, we wanted to offer a spark of hope to begin this fresh, new year.
This is not in any way ignoring the difficulties we still face or the challenges ahead of us. But to face these challenges we need a foundation of hope–solid ground on which to stand as we strive to do the great work in the service of the Earth community.
Eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and Climate grief are running rampant in our...
This episode of Spotlights features Sam Mickey and Kimberly Carfore in conversation with a topic Sam has been researching recently: contemplative posthuman design, which is a way of bringing design thinking into dialogue with contemplative studies and the ecological sensibilities of posthumanism. It is a design approach that works with contemplative practices to envision ways of harmoniously integrating humans with the more-than-human world. Sam draws connections between these ideas and the work of the contemporary German philosopher,...
Joyous Solstice greetings to all!
In honor of Solstice , we would like to offer you this truly magnificent short poem from Yolande “Nikki” Giovanni Jr.
Ms. Giovanni is one of the world’s most well-known African-American poets. Her work covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children’s literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award and was...
This episode of Spotlights features Kimberly Carfore, PhD, co-chair of the Religion and Ecology unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The annual meeting of the AAR happened at the end of November. Dr. Carfore talks about the various panels hosted by the Religion and Ecology unit this year, including a panel on Dr. Christopher Carter’s book The Spirit of Soul Food, which was featured on this podcast earlier in the year. Dr. Carfore also gives a preview of what the Religion and Ecology unit is putting together for the 2023 meeting of the...
Since we released the Religions of the World and Ecology online courses through Yale/Coursera last December, we at the Forum have been frequently asked if it’s possible to sample the course content before enrolling. We’re very pleased to now share with you excerpts from the original course interviews, so you can get a taste of the rich content found in these classes.
Remember that the courses are always free to audit. To get the courses for free, please follow these instructions.
We...
Warmest greetings to all of you as the colder days approach here in the Northern Hemisphere. Here we highlight some of the wonderful events happening this December related to religion and ecology. To see all upcoming offerings, check out our event page.
12/8, 3pm EST
Green Sabbath Project Gathering
“The Time of Progress and the Times of the Planet” with Whitney Bauman
Online. Free and open to all. Register here.
During the covid pandemic (now endemic)...
This episode of Spotlights features Rowan Deer, PhD, author of Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloomsbury, 2020), which brings together literary, philosophical, and scientific perspectives to rethink animism for the Anthropocene. She discusses the way her book juxtaposes authors like Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, and William Shakespeare with the Copernican Revolution, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious. She also discusses the the role of deconstruction in...
From 6 to 18 November 2022, government delegations from 198 countries convened for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. In advance of this global gathering, Yale Forum partners at Faith for Earth, an initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), compiled a directory of all religiously-related side events held in relation to COP27. In addition to this curated list, UNEP Faith for Earth also also released a guide for faith actors–and other stakeholders...
At this time of year, we at the Forum want to take a moment to express our gratitude for the animals, the wise sacred trees, the wind, and the water.
For the Indigenous peoples on whose land we now reside.
And for all of you working every day to protect and restore our beloved Earth community. For you we offer this lovely poem by poet Alberto Alvaro Rios. We can create something greater–together.
When Giving Is All We Have
By Alberto Ríos
One river gives
Its...
This episode of Spotlights features our host, Sam Mickey, discussing eco-anxiety, which is generally defined as a chronic worry, distress, or fear concerning ecological devastation. Struggles with eco-anxiety have increased in recent years, and they have been exacerbated by the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic. Sam reflects on two recently published anthologies that he edited with Douglas A. Vakoch, Eco-Anxiety and Pandemic Distress: Psychological Perspectives on Resilience and Interconnectedness (Oxford University Press, 2022...