Lisa H Sideris
Biographic Data
| ID | 954239 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa H Sideris |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa H |
| FAMILY NAME | Sideris |
| SIGNATURE | SIDERIS L H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Astrotopia
Repairing Concepts, Repairing Worlds
Religions in Extractive Zones
This essay serves as an expansive, conceptual anchor and scholarly argument that demonstrates the modality of "reflexive extractivist" religious studies and also orients the Special Issue on Religion in Extractive Zones. We demonstrate that critical religious and theological scholarship have existing tools and methods for deepening the study of extraction in the environmental humanities and related discourses. We make two interconnected arguments…
Introduction to the Special Issue
Religion and extractivism-like other aspects of a petroculture (Petrocultures Research Group 2016; Wilson et al
Radical Strategies
Environmentalists have long worried about humanity's estrangement from nature, and the emotional, psychological, and ethical consequences. In a world dominated by virtual and human-built environments and insulated from the rhythms of nature, concerns about our alienation from nature have intensified. To the extent that they occur at all, direct encounters with nature increasingly take a negative form, as seen in ever more destructive and erratic …
Living Well Together in a Climate-Changed Future
This essay focuses on the emotional and relational investments of scientists and others engaged in and supportive of genetic technologies used in conservation efforts, with particular attention to the different moral and religious imaginaries that fuel endeavors to save species threatened by climate change and extinction. I argue that two distinct visions and competing religious repertoires can be discerned in the secular landscape of genetic tec…
Special Issue Introduction
.
The Last Biped Standing? Climate Change and Evolutionary Exceptionalism at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins
The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, is one of the most visited science exhibits in the world, but it has sparked controversy since its opening. Critics have worried that ties to Koch Industries have distorted the exhibition's presentation of evolutionary and climate science, but few have undertaken a detailed analysis of these and other influences on the exhibition. I argue that t…
Grave Reminders
This essay builds upon recent work in the environmental humanities, and that of various writers and journalists, on the emerging topic of environmental grief and mourning. I consider a spectrum of responses to Anthropocene-era crises like climate change and extinction, with particular emphasis on how we are oriented toward the past and the future. These perspectives range from positions that explicitly reject grief and vulnerability, to voices ur…
Biosphere, Noosphere, and the Anthropocene
Visions of a high-tech ‘good’ Anthropocene as well as ambitious world-making projects like Biosphere 2 have roots in a quasi-religious form of cosmism and attendant notions of the noosphere: a planetary sphere of mind. Cosmic perspectives often celebrate and naturalize an image of humans as participants in and ultimately directors of planetary and cosmic processes. This brand of cosmism encourages fantasies of fleeing our ‘used’ planet in search …
Special Issue Introduction
Special Issue Introduction: Religion, Science and the Future
Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age
This article focuses on New Story/Universe Story/Epic of Evolution movements, forms of science-based ecospirituality that have emerged in recent decades. One of my central claims is that these narratives tend to encourage awe and wonder at scientific information and expert knowledge as that which is most ‘real’, over and above direct encounters with the natural world. As such, I question whether these new myths are likely to engender the environm…
Forum Response
On Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom
Journal Article On Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Religious Scholarship in a Time of Crisis Get access Lisa H. Sideris Lisa H. Sideris * *Lisa H. Sideris, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Sycamore 230, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. A version of this paper was presented at the Third Annual Cultures of Energy Symposium at Rice University, April 2014. I am grateful for encouragement and—especially—c…
Pragmatism, Ethics, and the Disciplines
G. Scott Davis's Believing and Acting (2012) affirms a pragmatist position against what he often terms the “temptations” of theory in religious studies. Such temptations are illustrated, as Davis sees it, by the Scylla of cognitive studies (which searches, in a reductionist way, for universal or innate neurological underpinnings of religious experience) and the Charybdis of postmodernist “power studies.” Davis is critical of both, and he makes so…
I See You
I explore empathic dimensions of James Cameron’s film Avatar’s central metaphor of seeing others, and the uses of empathy and empathic bonding throughout the film, both between humans and the Na’vi, and between the Na’vi and the animals that inhabit their world. Empathy entails an ability to see and feel the world from another’s perspective—feeling with rather than feeling for. Jake Sully’s identity as shifting, and boundary-crossing, makes him a…
Theology, Creation, and Environmental Ethics
Dark Green Religion
Journal Article Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality, and the Planetary Future. By Bron Taylor Get access Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality, and the Planetary Future. By Taylor Bron. University of California Press, 2010. 360 pages. $60.00. Lisa H. Sideris Lisa H. Sideris Indiana University [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume …
Fact and Fiction, Fear and Wonder
иг~ГнЕ real world around is a recurring phrase in the writings of Rachel Carson. Carson is best known as the author of Silent Spring (1962), the lyrical yet fact-based expose that alerted Americans to the dangers of chemical pesticides in the environment. But Carson's name was already familiar to many in the 1950s and 60s, owing to her best-selling books on the sea and sea life. In those earlier works, Carson evokes a reality that is best apprehe…
Evolving Environmentalism
The impact on ecological theology of green and postmodern critiques of science has led to disturbing parallels between the work of some Christian environmentalists and process theologians on the one hand, and the arguments of Intelligent Design (ID) proponents on the other. At the heart of these critiques is a rejection of mechanistic science and "neo-Darwinism". Both ID proponents and ecotheologians critique the disenchanted and reductionist wor…
At Home in Nature
“A little band of dedicated Thoreauvians,” E. B. White once remarked, “would be a sorry sight indeed.” Thoreau is an unusual figure because even his admirers find him an uncomfortable presence—a regular hairshirt of a man, White dubbed him. Thoreau is that pang in your conscience reminding you that your barn, or house, or car is far bigger than it needs to be. Yet readers of Walden often close the book wondering what, if anything, Thoreau would h…
Religion, Environmentalism, and the Meaning of Ecology
Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection
In the last few decades, religious and secular thinkers have tackled the world's escalating environmental crisis by attempting to develop an ecological ethic that is both scientifically accurate and free of human-centered preconceptions. This groundbreaking study shows that many of these environmental ethicists continue to model their positions on romantic, pre-Darwinian concepts that disregard the predatory and cruelly competitive realities of t…
Grave Reminders
This essay builds upon recent work in the environmental humanities, and that of various writers and journalists, on the emerging topic of environmental grief and mourning. I consider a spectrum of responses to Anthropocene-era crises like climate change and extinction, with particular emphasis on how we are oriented toward the past and the future. These perspectives range from positions that explicitly reject grief and vulnerability, to voices ur…
Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age
This article focuses on New Story/Universe Story/Epic of Evolution movements, forms of science-based ecospirituality that have emerged in recent decades. One of my central claims is that these narratives tend to encourage awe and wonder at scientific information and expert knowledge as that which is most ‘real’, over and above direct encounters with the natural world. As such, I question whether these new myths are likely to engender the environm…
On Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom
Journal Article On Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Religious Scholarship in a Time of Crisis Get access Lisa H. Sideris Lisa H. Sideris * *Lisa H. Sideris, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Sycamore 230, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. A version of this paper was presented at the Third Annual Cultures of Energy Symposium at Rice University, April 2014. I am grateful for encouragement and—especially—c…
Evolving Environmentalism
The impact on ecological theology of green and postmodern critiques of science has led to disturbing parallels between the work of some Christian environmentalists and process theologians on the one hand, and the arguments of Intelligent Design (ID) proponents on the other. At the heart of these critiques is a rejection of mechanistic science and "neo-Darwinism". Both ID proponents and ecotheologians critique the disenchanted and reductionist wor…
Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection
In the last few decades, religious and secular thinkers have tackled the world's escalating environmental crisis by attempting to develop an ecological ethic that is both scientifically accurate and free of human-centered preconceptions. This groundbreaking study shows that many of these environmental ethicists continue to model their positions on romantic, pre-Darwinian concepts that disregard the predatory and cruelly competitive realities of t…
Religion, Environmentalism, and the Meaning of Ecology
Evolving Environmentalism
The impact on ecological theology of green and postmodern critiques of science has led to disturbing parallels between the work of some Christian environmentalists and process theologians on the one hand, and the arguments of Intelligent Design (ID) proponents on the other. At the heart of these critiques is a rejection of mechanistic science and "neo-Darwinism". Both ID proponents and ecotheologians critique the disenchanted and reductionist wor…
At Home in Nature
“A little band of dedicated Thoreauvians,” E. B. White once remarked, “would be a sorry sight indeed.” Thoreau is an unusual figure because even his admirers find him an uncomfortable presence—a regular hairshirt of a man, White dubbed him. Thoreau is that pang in your conscience reminding you that your barn, or house, or car is far bigger than it needs to be. Yet readers of Walden often close the book wondering what, if anything, Thoreau would h…
Fact and Fiction, Fear and Wonder
иг~ГнЕ real world around is a recurring phrase in the writings of Rachel Carson. Carson is best known as the author of Silent Spring (1962), the lyrical yet fact-based expose that alerted Americans to the dangers of chemical pesticides in the environment. But Carson's name was already familiar to many in the 1950s and 60s, owing to her best-selling books on the sea and sea life. In those earlier works, Carson evokes a reality that is best apprehe…
Dark Green Religion
Journal Article Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality, and the Planetary Future. By Bron Taylor Get access Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality, and the Planetary Future. By Taylor Bron. University of California Press, 2010. 360 pages. $60.00. Lisa H. Sideris Lisa H. Sideris Indiana University [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume …
I See You
I explore empathic dimensions of James Cameron’s film Avatar’s central metaphor of seeing others, and the uses of empathy and empathic bonding throughout the film, both between humans and the Na’vi, and between the Na’vi and the animals that inhabit their world. Empathy entails an ability to see and feel the world from another’s perspective—feeling with rather than feeling for. Jake Sully’s identity as shifting, and boundary-crossing, makes him a…
Theology, Creation, and Environmental Ethics
Pragmatism, Ethics, and the Disciplines
G. Scott Davis's Believing and Acting (2012) affirms a pragmatist position against what he often terms the “temptations” of theory in religious studies. Such temptations are illustrated, as Davis sees it, by the Scylla of cognitive studies (which searches, in a reductionist way, for universal or innate neurological underpinnings of religious experience) and the Charybdis of postmodernist “power studies.” Davis is critical of both, and he makes so…
Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age
This article focuses on New Story/Universe Story/Epic of Evolution movements, forms of science-based ecospirituality that have emerged in recent decades. One of my central claims is that these narratives tend to encourage awe and wonder at scientific information and expert knowledge as that which is most ‘real’, over and above direct encounters with the natural world. As such, I question whether these new myths are likely to engender the environm…
Forum Response
On Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom
Journal Article On Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Religious Scholarship in a Time of Crisis Get access Lisa H. Sideris Lisa H. Sideris * *Lisa H. Sideris, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Sycamore 230, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. A version of this paper was presented at the Third Annual Cultures of Energy Symposium at Rice University, April 2014. I am grateful for encouragement and—especially—c…
Biosphere, Noosphere, and the Anthropocene
Visions of a high-tech ‘good’ Anthropocene as well as ambitious world-making projects like Biosphere 2 have roots in a quasi-religious form of cosmism and attendant notions of the noosphere: a planetary sphere of mind. Cosmic perspectives often celebrate and naturalize an image of humans as participants in and ultimately directors of planetary and cosmic processes. This brand of cosmism encourages fantasies of fleeing our ‘used’ planet in search …
Special Issue Introduction
Special Issue Introduction: Religion, Science and the Future
Special Issue Introduction
.
The Last Biped Standing? Climate Change and Evolutionary Exceptionalism at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins
The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, is one of the most visited science exhibits in the world, but it has sparked controversy since its opening. Critics have worried that ties to Koch Industries have distorted the exhibition's presentation of evolutionary and climate science, but few have undertaken a detailed analysis of these and other influences on the exhibition. I argue that t…
Grave Reminders
This essay builds upon recent work in the environmental humanities, and that of various writers and journalists, on the emerging topic of environmental grief and mourning. I consider a spectrum of responses to Anthropocene-era crises like climate change and extinction, with particular emphasis on how we are oriented toward the past and the future. These perspectives range from positions that explicitly reject grief and vulnerability, to voices ur…
Radical Strategies
Environmentalists have long worried about humanity's estrangement from nature, and the emotional, psychological, and ethical consequences. In a world dominated by virtual and human-built environments and insulated from the rhythms of nature, concerns about our alienation from nature have intensified. To the extent that they occur at all, direct encounters with nature increasingly take a negative form, as seen in ever more destructive and erratic …
Living Well Together in a Climate-Changed Future
This essay focuses on the emotional and relational investments of scientists and others engaged in and supportive of genetic technologies used in conservation efforts, with particular attention to the different moral and religious imaginaries that fuel endeavors to save species threatened by climate change and extinction. I argue that two distinct visions and competing religious repertoires can be discerned in the secular landscape of genetic tec…
Repairing Concepts, Repairing Worlds
Religions in Extractive Zones
This essay serves as an expansive, conceptual anchor and scholarly argument that demonstrates the modality of "reflexive extractivist" religious studies and also orients the Special Issue on Religion in Extractive Zones. We demonstrate that critical religious and theological scholarship have existing tools and methods for deepening the study of extraction in the environmental humanities and related discourses. We make two interconnected arguments…
Introduction to the Special Issue
Religion and extractivism-like other aspects of a petroculture (Petrocultures Research Group 2016; Wilson et al
Astrotopia
Sociology (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Environmental ethics (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Anthropocene (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works)