Join us in welcoming Dr. Graham Chamness to the DePaul Honors Program! As our newest Honors faculty member, Dr. Chamness will be teaching HON 104: Religion & the Environment this winter.
As a scholar of premodern Chinese literature and religion, Dr. Chamness’s research explores the intersection of literature, Buddhism, Daoism, and the environment in medieval China. He has contributed to forthcoming edited volumes on Chinese environmental history and poetry, and he is currently working on a book project that examines the birth of Chinese landscape poetry and art as a byproduct of the large-scale displacement and migration of northern Chinese elites into what is today south China in the fourth century CE. He holds a BA in Classics and MA in Chinese from the University of Colorado Boulder as well as a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. Prior to joining DePaul, he taught at Boston University, MIT, and most recently Kalamazoo College. In addition to his academic experience, he worked as senior content manager at the Chicago-based think tank MacroPolo of the Paulson Institute focusing on US-China relations. He is also currently working toward producing the first complete English translation of the early medieval Chinese alchemist Ge Hong’s (283–343) masterwork, Baopuzi: The Master Who Embraces Simplicity.
Check out the course description for Dr. Chamness’s new class, HON 104: Religion and the Environment:
Religions today are sometimes blamed for contributing to ecological crises, celebrated as offering ways of living in harmony with nature, or compartmentalized as having little to do with ecology. But how have world religions shaped and been shaped by their natural environments? What role does religion play in contributing to, mediating, and responding to environmental degradation? This course explores the interrelation between religious communities and their environments by examining how religious traditions have been constructed and mobilized to justify the human exploitation of nature, as well as to inspire critique, resistance, and environmental activism—among other things. We will consider the extent to which religious ideas have any real impact on the material world, how religions are invoked in the current climate discourse, and whether religious thought and practice have the potential to alter the course of our environmental futures.
Leave a Reply