The Iris Book Award is an annual prize honoring outstanding work that offers new insights into the meaning and status of the human in relation to science, technology, nature, and religion. The award is an initiative of the Center for Religion & the Human at Indiana University and overseen by former IU faculty member Lisa Sideris (now at UC Santa Barbara). Please join us this year as we honor Sarah McFarland Taylor. Taylor is the winner of the 2023 Iris Book Award for her 2019 book Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue (NYU Press) and an associate professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University, specializing in the intersections of media, religion, culture, consumerism, climate change, conservation, and environment. The award presentation will be followed by remarks from the author and a discussion of the book with Bishnupriya Ghosh (UCSB, English and Global Studies) and Amanda M. Nichols (UCSB, Environmental Studies).

 

Ecopiety offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ranging from portrayals of environmental sin and virtue such as the eco-pious depiction of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, to the green capitalism found in the world of mobile-device “carbon sin-tracking” software applications, to the socially conscious vegetarian vampires in True Blood, the volume illuminates the work pop culture performs as both a mirror and an engine for the greening of American spiritual and ethical commitments. Taylor makes the case that it is not through a framework of grim duty or obligation, but through one of play and delight, that we may move environmental ideals into substantive action. 

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Nature, Ethics, and Technology Program in the Department of Environmental Studies and the Walter H. Capps Center.