Environmental Hermeneutics Seminar
Environmental Hermeneutics Seminar
Bimonthly September – May 2025-26
Bimonthly September – May 2025-26
This online seminar will provide an advanced introduction to the new field of “Environmental Hermeneutics.” While many older texts can be understood as interpreting environments (Leopold, Thoreau, Emerson), the first texts intentionally to address philosophical hermeneutics to nature and environments appeared only in the mid-1990s. The first work that sought explicitly to establish Environmental Hermeneutics as a distinct field appeared as recently as 2014, Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics. We shall briefly draw upon that work but then extend the readings into more contemporary sources, including texts published in 2024 and 2025. The seminar will proceed at two levels. First, it will illuminate Environmental Hermeneutics as a specific theme (a “regional,” topical hermeneutics) with a focus on the ways philosophical hermeneutics contributes to environmental discourse. Second, the seminar will demonstrate ways in which the field of environmental hermeneutics contributes to the larger field of hermeneutics more generally. How, for example, does the model of the hermeneutic text need to be reenvisioned when applied to nature?
This seminar on Environmental Hermeneutics is designed to be an advanced introduction for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Some background in hermeneutics is encouraged but not required. There are separate links at the bottom right of this page for more specific program requirements and for registration and payment.
A certificate will be awarded upon successful completion of the course.
The deadline for registration is Saturday, September 20, 2025.
The seminar will meet bimonthly between September 2025 and May 2026, with classes on the following Saturdays:
September 27
November 15
January 10
March 7
May 9
• To facilitate international participation, classes will begin at 10 am Eastern US time.
• Each class will be conducted online and taught in English
• Class sessions will each run 90 minutes
• Office hours will be held following each session
Hermeneutics offers an approach to interpretation geared toward understanding, a theme that may seem ordinary and banal but is quite sophisticated and greatly in demand in a world striven by opposition and conflict. Hermeneutics has been applied in numerous fields, including not only philosophy but anthropology, education, gender studies, history, intercultural dialogue, international development, law, literature, medicine, natural science, psychology, race studies, religious studies, rhetoric, social science, social and political theory, and translation studies. The 20th century intellectual heirs of hermeneutics include Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur.
John Arthos
Nathan M. Bell
Michael Johnson
Fernando Nascimento
George Taylor
David Utsler
Many of the instructors have committed to attending all or most of the class sessions and office hours, even when they are not the class instructor themselves. All of the instructors have committed to participating in office hours on the day they teach.