Volume 22, No. 3 Fall 2011 from Our Members
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Letter from the Editor Welcome to the fall 2011 edition of the ISEE Newsletter. As the length of the newsletter attests, the second half of this year has seen an intense amount of activity. The number of scholars working in environmental ethics and philosophy continues to climb, research is strong, and the job market is steadily improving. If there is a theme to the current issue, it is the state of the profession. On pp. 2-3 you will find an overview of the profession with references to more detailed information in subsequent sections, including an update on graduate programs and certificates, a listing of current job openings, and an extensive end-of-the-year bibliography. Newsletter For this edition we are fortunate to have two contributions Volume 22, No. 3 Fall 2011 from our members. Baylor Johnson (St. Lawrence University) ISSN 2224-8250 provides a glimpse of a book in progress about a six-week outdoors trip he took with his teenage daughter Tess. In the excerpt, Baylor IN THIS ISSUE reflects on the idea of the sublime at Cirque of the Towers, Wind 2 State of the Profession River Range, Wyoming. Our second contribution is the unnerving 4 Excerpt from Father, Daughter: poem ―Remaking a Bush Garden‖ by Vivienne Benton (University Travels with Tess by Baylor of Queensland). Johnson ISEE is also very busy. Planning is underway for the Ninth 7 ―Remaking a Bush Garden,‖ a Annual Meeting for Environmental Philosophy to be held June poem by Vivienne Benton 12th to 15th, 2012 in Allenspark Colorado (elevation 8,500 feet). 8 General Announcements This year‘s keynote speakers are Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University) 9 Member News & Activities and Phil Cafaro (Colorado State University). We encourage 10 Events & Issues members to submit abstracts for the always rewarding event. The winner of the first annual Holmes Rolston, III Early Career Essay 12 In Memoriam Prize is Joakim Sandberg; a description of his paper can be found in 14 The Profession the General Announcements section (pp. 8-9). As well, ISEE has 51 Film & Other Multimedia announced the second iteration of the annual competition. 53 Recent Publications Scholars in the early stages of their career should be sure to submit 145 Business, Membership, & Dues a paper. The ISEE website continues to grow and mature. Traffic is SEND US YOUR UPDATES Whether you landed a new job, won an up, with almost 4,000 hits in the month of September alone. New award, defended your dissertation, additions to the site include video and podcasts sections, an animal retired from teaching, or did something studies bibliography maintained by Michigan State University, and peculiar, interesting, or enlightening, other scrip-scrap, such as the eye-popping Drake Hotel ISEE wants to know! If you have news Thanksgiving menu from 1886. to share, please contact ISEE with the subject heading ―Member News.‖ Finally, I am looking for a volunteer to help produce the ISEE newsletter. Please contact me at [email protected] if you are interested or know of someone who may be interested. Students wishing to get the pulse of the field and to interact with many of its figures are particularly encouraged to volunteer. A number of exciting projects are in the works, including a series on select environmental themes. Details are soon to follow. Subscribe to I wish everyone a safe, gratifying, and productive end of the ISEE‘s RSS feed year. See you on the other side of 2011. —William Grove-Fanning FALL 2011 1 The State of the Profession Readers wishing for some background on the state of the profession of environmental philosophy should consult the special issue of Ethics & the Environment 12, no. 2 (Autumn 2007), which contains 15 commentaries on the future of environmental philosophy. In a nutshell, the profession is healthy, it is evolving rapidly to meet new challenges, and it is incorporating new voices and approaches. Despite the continued deterioration of the tenure system, the increasing popularity of and new directions in environmental philosophy provide some assurance that specialists will be well-positioned to land tenure-track jobs across academia. This is especially the case for those focused on emerging issues and willing to work interdisciplinarily in environmental studies programs. —Graduate Programs. ISEE and the Center for Environmental Philosophy have periodically tracked graduate programs and graduate certificates in environmental philosophy. Where previously it made sense to list classes in environmental ethics and departments having a single specialist, it is no longer feasible to do so given the relative abundance of introductory classes and the increased number of philosophers with competence in the field. Accordingly, for the current update ISEE has adopted new standards of inclusion: (1) a college/school/program/major/etc. must list in writing environmental philosophy as one of its curricular components; (2) the parent institution must have more than one philosopher actively working in the field. Fourteen programs satisfy the new criteria—2 offer graduate certificates, 9 offer an MA or MS, and 7 offer a Ph.D. A brief description of each program along with their affiliated specialists and web address can be found on pp. 14-17. If your program satisfies the criteria and you would like to have it listed in an upcoming newsletter and on the ISEE website, please contact ISEE at [email protected]. —Jobs. Jobs for Philosophers (JFP), a publication of the American Philosophical Association (APA), is the primary venue for advertising jobs in philosophy in the United States and Canada. While the APA publishes four issues of the JFP per year, the fall edition is the most important as interviews for positions are conducted in December at the meeting of the East Coast Division. Although the number of advertised positions for 2011 is nowhere near pre-2008 levels, the number of job openings is up 33% over last year, from 146 (fall 2010) to 194 (fall 2011). The situation is even better for those working in environmental ethics and philosophy. Consistent with the larger trend, there are 43% more jobs in environmental ethics and philosophy this year (10 advertised positions) than last year (7 advertised positions). More significantly, there has been a considerable uptick of philosophy-friendly jobs in environmental studies programs or departments, a trend that is sure to continue as schools further incorporate the humanities in their programs and degrees. ISEE, for instance, has posted 20 environmental studies jobs, at all ranks, since August 2011. All told, ISEE has posted 36 job openings this fall for which a specialist in environmental ethics and philosophy will be qualified. —Research. As evidenced by the size of the latest bibliography (pp. 53-144), research in environmental philosophy continues at a brisk pace. In addition to the nine journals that ISEE catalogs, more than 25 journal neighbors (http://iseethics.org/journals-of-interest/) regularly 2 ISEE NEWSLETTER publish work of philosophical interest. Since last fall‘s newsletter, there are 61 new books, 34 articles in non-philosophy journals, and 4 special issues of environmental philosophy in non- environmental philosophy journals. Seventy-four new chapters or books of interest were also published. Climate change remains the hottest research area, with 8 new books, 5 anthologies, 16 articles, and 2 special journal issues. Ecotheology follows closely behind with 15 new books, 7 anthologies, and 7 articles in non-philosophy journals. (Offerings in ecotheology are listed in the sections ―Articles in Non-Environmental Philosophy Journals‖ and ―Other Books and Chapters,‖ pp. 99-144.) Another area garnering increased attention is animal studies, the interdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and other animals. There are 7 new books and 3 anthologies including the just-published, 984 page Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics. Readers wishing to become familiar with this area of investigation are encouraged to visit the Minding Animals International website as well as Michigan State University‘s animal studies bibliography. Last of all, 2011 saw the release of a spate of introductory textbooks, 7 in all. Two thousand twelve looks to continue this trend with 2 textbooks scheduled for publication the first part of the year and more undoubtedly on the way. —Trends. It is increasingly difficult to conceive of environmental ethics and philosophy as a unified field given that its boundaries are more fluid and its shape more amorphous than ever. This is primarily due to two factors—a greater variety of theoretical commitments and an increasing number of environmental problems. Regarding the former, while the field was created by philosophers trained in classical Western and analytic philosophy in the United States and Australasia in the 1970s, by the mid-to-late 1980s continental environmental philosophy emerged as a second major strand. Where, loosely speaking, classically trained analytic philosophers are amenable to the truth of scientific claims and focus on conceptual clarification, continental philosophers are more wary of scientific abstraction and claims of context-independence. Continental philosophy, moreover, is an umbrella term that encompasses any number of approaches ranging from phenomenology and existentialism to hermeneutics and deconstruction. The last few years has seen a rapid increase in deconstruction and anti-foundationalist approaches to environmental philosophy, resulting in new zones of philosophical enquiry. Increasingly, philosophically interesting environmental material is being conducted by scholars with backgrounds in critical theory, queer studies, postcolonialism, American pragmatism, and so forth. The shape and future direction(s) of environmental philosophy is also determined by problems that environmental philosophers are trying to eliminate. In addition to those addressed by the founders of the field (animal rights, biodiversity loss, land degradation, nuclear energy, pollution and health, population growth, etc.), emerging issues (environmental justice, energy sustainability, climate change, geoengineering, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, food and water issues, etc.) continue to energize the field.