Agrarianism, Spirituality, and the Ecopoetics of Hope: A Conversation with Norman Wirzba


Norman Wirzba | Distinguished Professor of Theology and Ecology & Senior Fellow of Ethics, Duke University

Serena Chou | Associate Research Fellow Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica


Abstract

In Agrarianism, Spirituality, and the Ecopoetics of Hope, Norman, Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke University is interviewed by professor and environmental humanities scholar Serena Chou at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Professor Wirzba has made fundamental contributions to the study of agrarianism as everyday practices of faith, community, and the ecopoetics of communion since his ground-breaking edited volume The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land in 2003. In his latest book Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land (2022), Professor Wirzba revisits literary and environmental agrarianism by focusing not just on the spiritual dimensions but the actual practices and pragmatic ethos of farming. In this interview and conversation, Professors Wirzba and Chou reflect upon, discuss, and illuminate practices of farming, producing, and consuming as the basis for alternative futures and ecological conversion in the comparative and interdisciplinary contexts of contemporary Taiwan.

 

Speaker's Short Intro.

Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke University. His research and teaching interests are at the intersection of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. Raised on a farm in Southern Alberta, Norman went on to study history at the University of Lethbridge, theology at Yale University Divinity School, and philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Since then he has taught at Saint Thomas More College/University of Saskatchewan, Georgetown College (KY), and Duke University Divinity School. He is the author of numerous books, including Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land (U of Notre Dame P, 2002), This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World (Cambridge UP, 2021), and Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (Cambridge UP, 2019), and is the editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land (Counterpoint Press, 2004), one of the first and prominent collections of essays by agrarians in the English language. He likes to bake, cook and make things with wood. He also enjoys playing the guitar and tries to grow some food as well.


View Professor Norman Wirzba's lecture video：www.youtube.com/watch?v=K88Albmd8xg 


Shiuhhuuah Serena Chou is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Her research interests include transpacific literary and agricultural environmentalism, medical-environmental humanities, and eco-spirituality. She is currently completing a book-length manuscript on organic farming and modes of reworlding ecopoetics while growing chives, asparagus, mulberries, gourds and practicing sustainability at her office eco-rooftop garden in Taipei along with 23 colleagues in the Farm for Change project. 


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