Humanities

Precarious livelihoods

My thinking about seabirds and wild salmon under climate change has been shaped quite a lot by social anthropology—in particular The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing and Reclaiming the Discarded by Kathleen Millar. This 2025 SMMR webinar (video on youtube; slides as PDF) explains some of my current thinking about … Read more

Waterways Collective

The Waterways Collective is a group of artists and scientists who came together in 2024 to see where we’d get following wild salmon journeys into the Scottish landscape, out across the Atlantic, and up and down food chains. Info on our past events and projects is at waterwayscollective.org.

Deep-water intrusions

An essay moving between philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers, Haida mythteller Skaay, and the North Pacific Ocean. In Flemish (transl. Samuel Vriezen) in nY issue 32, Jan 2017, a special issue on Isabelle Stengers: English original here. “What strikes me, as a modern student of the non-human members of Skaay’s marine landscape, is the intricacy … Read more

Northwest Coastal Stories: Turbulence and Uncertainty in Science and in Culture

Program on the Comparative History of Ideas (CHID), Oceanography, and Honors Program, 2004–2013 Course announcement: This course will follow Jonathan Raban’s remarkable travelogue Passage to Juneau on a tour through the human and natural history of the Pacific Northwest coastal waters. We’ll discuss chaos theory and the circulation of Puget Sound; coastal ecology and climate … Read more

Teaching animal studies, 2001-2011

I taught animal studies at University of Washington 2001–2011 through the Program on the Comparative History of Ideas (CHID) and undergraduate Honors Program. These courses grew out of my masters work in religious studies. Writing Animals (2011) Co-taught with Sarah Read, English Syllabus: pdf Course announcement: This course will explore how writers in a variety … Read more

World Religions and the Environment

Developed for the undergraduate Honors Program, University of Washington, 2008 Syllabus: pdf Course announcement: This course will explore intersections between religious belief and practice and the natural world, on both grand and intimate scales. Grand like the all-encompassing vision of interconnectedness in Mahayana Buddhism, or the message of glory and salvation John Muir brought down … Read more

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