Featured Speakers

Deborah Janson is an associate professor of German in West Virginia University's Department of Foreign Languages. She has published articles on works from the German Enlightenment and Romantic periods and on German literature from an eco-feminist perspective.

Adrienne Young is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, Belmont alumna, and ardent supporter of sustainable agriculture. She bundled seed packets into the liner notes of her Grammy-nominated first album Plow to the End of the Row (2003).

John Tallmadge has dedicated his career to writing and teaching about the environment, pedagogy, and sustainability. He is the author of three books The Cincinnati Arch, Meeting the Tree of Life: A Teacher's Path, and Reading under the Sign of Nature: New Essays in Ecocriticism.

Peter Hershock, from The East-West Center, is Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program. His primary scholarly interests lie in investigating the philosophical implications of Buddhist practice, especially the Chan tradition, and on making use of Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues.

Janisse Ray is a writer, naturalist, and activist as well as author of three books of literary nonfiction. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (2000), a memoir about growing up in a junk yard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book.

Mary Oliver is the celebrated author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose. With her lyrical connection to the natural world, Oliver's poetry has firmly established her in the highest realm of American poets. Oliver has been honored with the National Book Award for Poetry, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, among others.

Abigail Jahiel, Illinois Wesleyan University, is Director of Environmental Studies and Associate Professor of Environmental and International Studies. A political scientist and China specialist by training, Dr. Jahiel has published articles on environmental issues in China in such journals as The China Quarterly, China Rights Forum, and Environmental Politics.

Dr. Judith Shapiro is the Director of the Global Environmental Politics Programs at American University. Her current research is in the political and social dynamics of environmental degradation and sustainable development in China. Her latest book is Mao's War against the Environment: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China.

Kavita Philip is Director of the Critical Theory Institute and Associate Professor of Women's Studies at University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Civilizing Natures: Race, Resources and Modernity in Colonial South India; author and editor of Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience; and co-editor of Homeland Securities, Multiple Contentions, and Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization.

For the full history of the featured speakers of the Belmont University Humanities Symposium, click here.

Download the full program here.