Feb. 6 at 4:10pm (Buttrick 101): “The Sustainable Sacred: Retelling the Religious History of the Lands That Became America.” Prof. Thomas Tweed, Department of American Studies, University of Notre Dame. Thomas Tweed’s forthcoming book, Religion in the Lands That Became America, is a sweeping retelling of religious history that spans 11,000 years and shows how religion has enhanced and hindered individual, communal, and environmental flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age. The story follows diverse devotees as they cross and transform the landscape, negotiate lifeway transitions (from foraging to farming and factories to fiber optics), and confront several “sustainability crises” (from the medieval Cornfield crisis to the ongoing Industrial crisis). In this first public talk about the project, Tweed offers an overview, assessing the standard narrative and indicating how this story differs. He ends by inviting discussion about its possible significance for retelling the religious history of the lands that became Tennessee and for addressing pressing national problems like polarization.
February 6-April 17 (Thursdays 4:30-6pm): Climate Innovation Accelerator at the Wond’ry: Client-facing, mentor-guided, project-based program with student teams. All learning, no grades. Paid team lead opportunities are available. Skills acquired: activating insights from interviews, navigating ambiguity, ideating, prototyping, project management, innovation, sustainability and strategic frameworks. Clients include names like Powertechs. Register here. Seats limited and competitive.
February 10 (12:00 - 1:30pm, Robert Penn Warren Center Seminar Room): Dr. Veronica Strang (University of Oxford) will present a Zoom talk entitled "Littoral Beings: Totemic Sea Country in Aboriginal Australia." During the event, Dr. Strang also will discuss her book, Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis (2023). Presentation abstract: "In Euro-American agricultural societies, draining ‘ambiguous’ wetlands and achieving defined boundaries between water bodies and dry land have long been a priority. Naval exploration and expansion, and coastal urban developments, have similarly encouraged visions of coastlines seeking secure divisions between land and sea. However, New Materialism in the Social Sciences and Humanities has encouraged more nuanced and relational analyses of littoral spaces. In this endeavour, it is helpful to engage with cultural perspectives that exemplify relational thinking about land and sea. This chapter therefore considers the ‘sea country’ of Aboriginal communities along Australia’s northern coastlines, in Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands. Here, Dreaming songlines and ancestral Rainbow Serpents flow between the ocean and freshwater bodies, creating a unified land-and-waterscape in which the multiple relationalities that connect salt and freshwater, people, and other living kinds, are central to customary lifeways and to indigenous communities’ contemporary efforts to protect their homelands.
February 15: Vanderbilt’s Center for Social Ventures is hosting its 2025 Annual Summit, themed Driving Sustainability & Social Impact. This free event is open to ALL Vanderbilt students and faculty, and will provide an opportunity to connect, engage in meaningful discussions, and explore the intersection of sustainability and social change. We would be honored to have you join us! You can register for the event using this link. Please feel free share this invitation with your students and colleagues as well. Contact: Haniya Shariff
February 17: Nashville Environmental Law & Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) Conference, Vanderbilt Law School (room TBA), 12:10 - 1:05 p.m.
