ecology and spirit
Each year, storms gather over the Atlantic and make landfall in the Outer Banks, a set of barrier islands off the North Carolina coast. Literally and figuratively, the atmosphere grows dense. The air pressure suddenly cracks and the wind is deafening. Homes are shaken, cemeteries flood, beaches erode. Animals and plants are dislocated. Then the winds move on. Things are rerooted, replaced, and reimagined.
What is it like to live through rapid ecological change? What are the impacts of a shifting landscape on people's relations with each other and with other-than-human beings?
Most importantly, can we imagine our future differently?
What is it like to live through rapid ecological change? What are the impacts of a shifting landscape on people's relations with each other and with other-than-human beings?
Most importantly, can we imagine our future differently?
The Outer Banks are on the frontlines of ecological change. My current research builds a holistic portrait of an ecology under stress, tracking people's relation to other-than-human beings. Integrating religious studies and multispecies studies, I include 'natural' non-human beings--plants, mould and lichen, mosquitos, oysters, and others--along with supernatural ones, such as spirits of the dead and God. Since 2021, I have been gathering stories and experiences from many people, including local Christians, US Army Corps scientists, real estate developers, mould experts, ecologists, insurance brokers, gardeners, and atmospheric scientists.
This project emerged from my ongoing interest in how people at home are enmeshed in global networks. Hurricanes originate off the coast of Africa, coalesce over the ocean, and travel westward linking coastal regions and countries across the Atlantic seaboard. Global weather patterns, such as hurricanes, are a major factor shaping the United States, including its religion. I remain interested in how weather atmospheres create pressure and recede, reconfiguring people’s relations with their world in the process. Increasingly, I'm also paying close attention to how infrastructure is built and imagined in the Outer Banks as a century-long process of stabilizing the sandy barrier islands begins to collapse.
As a corollary to this project, I am also directing TERA, a year-long experiment in collaborative thinking about the encounters between technology, ecology, religion, and art. It Our multidisciplinary, transnational approach aims to jumpstart future innovations in the emerging field of Religion & Ecology. Read more about it on this website and click through to www.teracollective.com
This project emerged from my ongoing interest in how people at home are enmeshed in global networks. Hurricanes originate off the coast of Africa, coalesce over the ocean, and travel westward linking coastal regions and countries across the Atlantic seaboard. Global weather patterns, such as hurricanes, are a major factor shaping the United States, including its religion. I remain interested in how weather atmospheres create pressure and recede, reconfiguring people’s relations with their world in the process. Increasingly, I'm also paying close attention to how infrastructure is built and imagined in the Outer Banks as a century-long process of stabilizing the sandy barrier islands begins to collapse.
As a corollary to this project, I am also directing TERA, a year-long experiment in collaborative thinking about the encounters between technology, ecology, religion, and art. It Our multidisciplinary, transnational approach aims to jumpstart future innovations in the emerging field of Religion & Ecology. Read more about it on this website and click through to www.teracollective.com
I'm recruiting graduate students in Religious Studies or Anthropology to work on related topics. Please contact me directly.
Funding for these projects thanks to my William Dawson Research Chair at McGill University & the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under the title, Disruption: Ecological and Spiritual Change on North America’s Lowest Shorelines.
Illustration courtesy of macrovector_official.
Illustration courtesy of macrovector_official.