There is no substitute for getting to know and working with colleagues to make our lives and professions more vibrant. Time to meet, talk, and study together collaboratively is of prime importance. (see bottom of page for info on previous seminars)

Summer 2003:

Thanks to a generous donation from the Germeshausen Foundation, we are able to offer a number of fellowships for free tuition and books, and free room and board to teachers of the sciences, English, or religion. For more information on fellowships, contact us at seminars@rsiss.net

Our students are increasingly being introduced to religious ideas and the teachings, personalities, and practices of the world’s religions. Teachers familiar with the contemporary, living character of religions are beginning to see that these diverse traditions also struggle to address the major issues of our time. One issue demanding international attention—but barely in the consciousness of the world’s religions—is the broad spectrum of concerns related to ecology. Yet, embedded within religions are important perspectives on human-earth relations that have been transmitted through the centuries. This workshop for secondary school teachers draws on the work of the Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE), which has been exploring these issues in a series of conferences at Harvard University and publications with Harvard University Press. The first major presentation for secondary school teachers was with Religious Studies in Secondary Schools (RSiSS) and the St. Francis Seminars, in the summer of 2000. The seminar for 2003 will build on the work of its predecessors, as both a continuation for previous participants and an introduction for those who are new to the field of religion and ecology.
The Forum on Religion and Ecology, at the forefront of this emerging interdisciplinary dialogue, combines religious studies with academic and activist discourses on the environment. It does so by highlighting the important roles religious traditions play in constructing moral frameworks and orienting narratives regarding human interactions with the environment. In this secondary-school workshop we will explore ways in which selected religious traditions enter into interdisciplinary dialogue with other key disciplines—science and English—concerned with the environment.
Religion and Ecology: Traditions and Dialogue Partners 2003 will focus on the ecological dynamics developed from three religious perspectives (Buddhism, Native North American traditions of the West Coast, and Confucianism), science (geology), and English (environmental literature). There will also be sessions investigating both ethical issues in religion and ecology, and problems and opportunities in the dialogue between religion and science.
These seminars have continued because of their enthusiastic reception by participants in the past four years.

Tentative schedule*
Friday, June 20: Introductions and Opening Remarks /
“The Integration of Disciplines and the Ecological Crisis”
Saturday- “Ecology: A Scientific Perspective”
Sunday, June 22: “Environmental Literature”
Monday, June 23: “Buddhism and Ecology”
Tuesday, June 24:
morning session: “Confucianism and Ecology”
evening session: “A Native American Perspective”
Wednesday, June 25- wrap up, resources, on-going projects, upcoming events, evaluations
See also information from the Religion and Ecology Project

*Faculty or schedule subject to change, if need be.

Early registration is encouraged, as applications will be accepted in the order received.

Cost
Substantial fellowships available (see below)
Registration (nonrefundable) by April 15: $150
Balance due June 1: $400
Total: $550

Location
This seminar will be held at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Lewisburg is a delightful college town offering participants a wide variety of resturants, bookstores, and parks.
Tuition includes room and board, books and materials. Housing will be in air-conditioned, single rooms in university dormitories. Bathrooms are shared. Food service will be provided by the university, with occasional meals out. Participants will have access to university library, computer, and recreational facilities.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Germeshausen Foundation, we will be able to offer twenty-five fellowships to this year’s seminar. Fellowships will cover the complete costs of tuition, room and board, and books. The goal of the fellowships is to allow teachers from schools that have little to no professional development funds to participate in the summer seminar. We encourage teams of teachers in the sciences and humanities to apply together. Not only does such teamwork model important dialogue among the disciplines, but it makes it easier to initiate curricular change and course offerings within schools. Fellowships for two teachers from the same school will be given special consideration.
Teachers from schools that can easily pay the costs of transportation and the regular registration fee of $550 are encouraged to do so.

Applicants for Fellowships
Please include a) a short statement, no longer than a page, on how you are integrating religion and ecology into your curriculum or how you think you might do so, b) a syllabus from a course either in religious studies or another humanities or science course you teach, and c) a book review written for other teachers on a title relevant to this interdisciplinary field (see next section).

Book Reviews
A list of titles to choose from is posted on here. This takes you to information on the Bucknell Summer Seminar. The review list is linked at that announcement. Reviewers may model reviews on the format used by other reviewers in the website section for “Books and Resources.”
These books cover a wide range of topics, from the issue of ecology in specific religious traditions to the sciences and historical studies. Please notify us (programs@rsiss.net) that you have chosen a specific book to review so we can remove its title from our list and avoid duplication of reviews.

Seminar Faculty:

Mary Evelyn Tucker
Mary Evelyn Tucker is professor of religion at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in world religions, Asian religions, and religion and ecology. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in the history of religions, specializing in Confucianism in Japan. She has published Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism (SUNY, 1989). She co-edited Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994), Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997), Confucianism and Ecology (Harvard, 1998) and Hinduism and Ecology (Harvard 2001). She and her husband, John Grim, have directed a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996-1998. In October 1998 they held two culminating conferences from the series at the United Nations and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They are the series editors for the ten volumes that are being published from the conferences by the Center and Harvard University Press. They are also editors of a book series on Ecology and Justice from Orbis Press. Mary Evelyn has been a committee member of the Environmental Sabbath program at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since 1986 and is vice-president of the American Teilhard Association. She is also a member of the Earth Charter Drafting Committee.

John Grim
John Grim is a professor, and chair, in the Department of Religion at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. As a historian of religions, John undertakes annual field studies in American Indian lifeways among the Apsaalooke/Crow peoples of Montana and the Swy-ahl-puh/Salish peoples of the Columbia River Plateau in eastern Washington. Raised in the Missouri drift prairies of North Dakota, John went to the urban environs of the Bronx to study with Thomas Berry at Fordham University. There, he completed a doctoral dissertation on Anishinaabe/Ojibway healing practitioners published in 1983 by the University of Oklahoma Press as The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians. With his wife, Mary Evelyn Tucker, he has co-edited Worldviews and Ecology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press) a book discussing perspectives on the environmental crisis from world religions and contemporary philosophy. John and Mary Evelyn are coordinators of the Forum on Religion and Ecology which is an outgrowth on the conference series they organized at Harvard. John is also president of the American Teilhard Association, which explores issues in religion and science especially in light of the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the late 20th century reworking of Teilhard’s thought by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme.

Donald K. Swearer, Ph.D.
Donald K. Swearer is the Charles & Harriet Cox McDowell Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College where he teaches courses in Asian and Comparative Religions, and is on the Asian Studies and Environmental Studies faculties. His principal research has focused on Buddhism, especially in Thailand-Southeast Asia. Recent and forthcoming monographs include Becoming the Buddha (2003), Mountains, Myths, and History: Sacred Mountains in Northern Thailand and Their Legends (2003), The Legend of Queen Cama (1998), and The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (1995). He is on the board of the Forum on Religion and Ecology and has authored several articles on Buddhism and ecology including: "The Hermeneutics of Buddhist Ecology in Contemporary Thailand: Buddhadasa and Dhammapitaka," in Buddhism and Ecology (eds. Mary Ellen Tucker and Duncan Williams, 1997); "Rights Because of Intrinsic Nature or Responsibilities Because of Mutual Interdependence?" in Buddhist Perspectives on the Earth Charter (1997); "Buddhism and Ecology: Challenge and Promise," Earth Ethics (1998); and "Principles and Poetry, Places and Stories: The Resources of Buddhist Ecology, " Daedalus (Fall, 2001). He is particularly interested in the intersection between nature and culture.

Scott Slovic, Ph.D.
Scott Slovic is professor of literature and environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also chairs the English Department's graduate program in literature and environment. From 1992 to 1995, he served as the founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and since 1995 he has edited ASLE's journal, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. As director of Nevada's Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities from 1995 to 2001, he hosted the North American Interdisciplinary Conference on Environment and Community three times. Scott is the author or editor of ten books, including Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing: Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez (1992), Getting Over the Color Green: Contemporary Environmental Literature of the Southwest (2001), and the forthcoming volumes The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism, 1993-2003 (2003) and What's Nature Worth? Exploring Narrative Expressions of Environmental Values (2003). He has published more than sixty articles, many of which aim to introduce general audiences or readers outside of the field of literary studies to environmental literature and ecocriticism. Scott edits the Credo Series for Milkweed Editions and the Environmental Arts and Humanities Series for the University of Nevada Press.

R. Craig Kochel is professor of geology at Bucknell University where he teaches courses in geomorphology, environmental geology, geologic hazards, hydrology, and planetary geology. Craig’s major area of research is in geomorphology (earth surface processes), primarily rivers, hillslope, and barrier islands. Much of his work has been on paleohydrology and the geomorphic response to climate change. He also studies the impact of catastrophic events on the landscape and in the interaction between the landscape and humans (geologic hazards). Craig holds the BA from Franklin & Marshall College, a MS from Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the faculty at Bucknell in 1990, Craig taught at SUNY Fredonia, Southern Illinois University, and University of Virginia. Craig is the author of more than 45 research articles and co-author of several books, including Process Geomorphology, (a best-selling text in that field). He is also past chair of the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of the Geological Society of America. Craig has also been an active participant in numerous events related to the Forum on Religion and Ecology. For more information, visit his departmental website at http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/kochel/


Fellowship reviewers:
Click here for a list of books to review.

history
Beginning with the Saint Francis Summer Seminars in 1997 we have brought secondary teachers and university scholars together to study. Conversations between teachers outside the seminar room have been just as important to particpants as those within the official seminar setting.

For more information on these seminars, or for registration materials, contact seminars@rsiss.net