Author and professor Bron Taylor will discuss how a multifaceted trend of “dark green” religion is becoming a global movement at UT’s fourth annual David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture on Thursday, February 20.
Taylor’s lecture, “Spirituality After Darwin: ‘Dark Green’ Nature Religion as Global Religious Movement,” is presented by the Issues Committee and co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies.
The event begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center auditorium. After the presentation, Taylor will participate in a question-and-answer session, and a reception and book signing will follow. Both events are free and open to the public.
“We are excited to have one of the pioneers of the important new field of religion, nature, and culture deliver our fourth Dungan Memorial Lecture,” said Rosalind Hackett, head of the Department of Religious Studies.
Taylor observes that since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, a new global earth religion has been rapidly spreading. This religion focuses on defending earth’s biocultural diversity, with followers feeling a sense of belonging in nature, expressing kinship with nonhuman organisms, and understanding the world to be deeply interconnected.
Taylor teaches religion, nature, and environmental ethics at the University of Florida and is a Carson Fellow of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. In addition to teaching, Taylor is editor in chief of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature and founder of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. His books include Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future, Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism, and Affirmative Action at Work: Law, Politics and Ethics.
Other lecture sponsors include the UT Central Program Council; Haines-Morris Endowment Fund; WUOT; Program in American Studies; and the Departments of Anthropology, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Microbiology, Philosophy, and Psychology.
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C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)