February 23, 2024
Yale Divinity School
New Haven, CT USA
GCRE is an interdisciplinary conference held jointly by Yale Divinity School and Yale School of the Environment.
This year’s conference theme is ENTANGLEMENTS.
We are accepting submissions of both academic papers and creative projects.
The deadline for submissions is November 26, 2023.
Contact: gcre@yale.edu
Reflections by Chris Freimuth
Approximately 130 participants attended the 8th Annual Graduate Conference in Religion & Ecology at Yale, representing nearly two dozen institutions – a growth of over 20% from last year!
Our conference, with the theme Entanglements, started off with remarks from Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Following this, Mary-Jane Rubenstein offered a riveting keynote address on “Pantheist Entanglements” (soon to be on Youtube). This was followed by a full schedule of 27 paper presentations; 6 creative workshops; an art gallery bursting with poetry, prose, visual and acoustic works; and a midday chapel service featuring Rev. Lisa Dahill as guest preacher and Willie Jennings as presider over communion. You can read Rev. Lisa Dahill's sermon here.
One of our goals was to expand the idea of what a conference could be. We joined together scholarly presentations with interactive workshops, artistic contributions and spiritual practice. And we are pleased to report that the synergy between these various ways of knowing/being was truly generative!
Throughout the day of the conference, and in the week since, we have been delighted by all of the positive feedback we've received. Of course, this is largely thanks to our incredible organizing committee – Ara Gargiulo, Anna Lenaker, Riley Erlandson, Katie Mills, Emily Peck, Icy McKether, Liz Vukovic, Dafne Villanueva, and myself.
