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.
Today, we'd like to uplift the new issue of Kosmos Journal, and particularly the theme of this issue–the gift of grief. In our quest for Hope, we often eschew and run from grief, sadness, mourning, and longing. But the articles in this issue provide a window into the transformation that can happen if we allow ourselves to fully feel it all, instead of resisting and running away. Meaning, elevated consciousness, and yes, even Hope can be found in those depths.
From the editor's introduction:
Can we humans also learn to spin gold...
This August, the Loka Initiative at University of Wisconsin Madison will be hosting The RITA (Resilience in the Anthropocene) Summit, a 3-day online event to support individuals and communities struggling with eco-anxiety and grief.
The summit offers a wide variety of speakers and panelists. Forum readers will be familiar with Mary Evelyn Tucker, Bobbi Patterson, and Fletcher Harper, but there are also many BIPOC speakers bringing new perspectives into the conversation. Keynotes will be delivered by Richard Davidson, founder and chair...
This episode of Spotlights features Freya Mathews, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Latrobe University, and author of several books, including The Ecological Self (1991, reissued with new intro in 2021), For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism (2003), Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture (2005), and her new book, The Dao of Civilization: a Letter to China (2023). We discuss her personal and professional path toward metaphysics, conservation ethics, and ecological civilization, with special attention to the unique...
My town is starting to pick up the pieces. 2023 hasn't been the easiest year here in north-central Vermont. Winter fought to stay around even harder than usual, snowing on and off into May. The frogs emerged and began to mate, but the ice and snow returned and killed many of them and their offspring. Then the rains began–crops and gardens struggled to grow with abundant water and little sun, and then the waves of toxic wildfire smoke arrived.
And then last week...
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, one of the first books in the Orbis Ecology and Justice Series.
This important early work in the field, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, includes a section with essays on the perspectives of different world religions; a section on contemporary ecological perspectives with contributions by such notables as Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, George Sessions, and Larry Rasmussen; introductory essays by Tu...
This episode of Spotlights features Sigurd Bergmann, PhD, professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and founding contributor to the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment. He discusses his transdisciplinary approach to eco-theology and the study of religion and ecology, taking a global perspective and crossing disciplinary fields of art, architecture, ethics, religion, and the environment. He also discusses some of his many books, including...
The ocean is profoundly peaceful and grounding – immersing even a toe in that vast salty bath can help connect us to an ancient and primordial place deep within. It can strip away the busy, noisy, technicolor trappings of the modern everyday, and for me all of this provides the bedrock on which I'm able to rebuild my sometimes waning hope.
The ocean gives so much to us. But what hope are we giving back to the ocean? Oceanographer Sylvia Earle has an answer to this very important question. “Hope Spots”...
Today, we'd like to highlight an Indigenous engaged project in the United States called Native Hope. Native Hope works on the ground with Indigenous communities and seeks to educate on the history of Indigenous in the United States, on the injustices experienced by tribes and individuals, and against cultural stereotypes of Indigenous Americans. Their main mission is to provide Hope to Indigenous and uplift the voices of all. They do this largely through the sharing of “Stories of Hope” in their blog and podcast, Hope Reports on...
This episode of Spotlights features Terra Schwerin Rowe, PhD, Associate Professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department at the University of North Texas. We discuss her most recent book, Of Modern Extraction: Experiments in Critical Petro-theology (Bloomsbury, 2022), where she draws on energy humanities in an intersectional-feminist analysis of extractivism, exploring material and discursive intersections of oil, religion, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism. A key take-away is that US citizens have not only made economic, technological, and infrastructural...
Joyous Summer Solstice to all!
Yesterday we celebrated the solstice–the day of the year (in the northern hemisphere) when the sun and its light and warmth stays with us the longest.
For many, the sun is synonymous with Hope. In the winter it recedes from us, and many experience Seasonal Affective Disorder and other challenges to mood, energy, and mental health for lack of the rays of solar energy that help to fuel us, body and soul. In those months we grieve for it and...