Meet the Faculty

Lisa Sideris

• Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D., Indiana University, 2000

Contact Information

Background

• Indiana University Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, 2006
• Fellowship, Center for the Study of Religion, (Darwin and Religion Project) Princeton University, 2000-2001
• Templeton Foundation Science and Religion Course Competition Prize, 1999-2000
• 1999-2000 Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship
• 1999 Religious Studies Departmental Dissertation Fellowship
• 1997-1998 Ruth N. Halls Fellowship

I received my Ph.D. from Indiana University in 2000. Before coming (back) to IU, I taught for a year at Pace University in New York City and for three years at McGill University in Montreal. In the broadest sense, I am interested in the value and ethical significance of natural processes. Much of my recent research focuses on the intersection of religion, science and environmental ethics. I study how religious environmental thought incorporates, or fails to incorporate, knowledge gained from the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary theory and ecology. My book, Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia, 2003) examines the way in which much of Christian environmental ethics, or “ecotheology,” misconstrues, or simply ignores, Darwinian theory, and the problems this creates for developing a realistic ethic for nature and animals. I am also interested in the religion-science interface more generally, the history of biology, and creation-evolution controversies past and present, including the recent rise of so-called Intelligent Design Theory.  More recently, my research has also focused on the life and work of Rachel Carson whose book Silent Spring (1962) arguably marks the beginning of the environmental movement in America. I am currently co-editing a collection of essays on the impact and legacy of Carson’s work across a wide range of disciplines (under contract with SUNY Press). I am especially intrigued by the religious underpinning of what Carson called a “sense of wonder” for the natural world, and the religious dimensions of nature study more generally, as it is often expressed, implicitly or explicitly, in science and nature writing.  

Research Interests

• Environmental and Animal Ethics, World Religions and Ecology  
• Science and Religion
• Evolution controversies
• Religion and Bioethics

Courses Recently Taught

• Science, Religion and the Environment
• Knowledge, Ethics and the Environment
• Theory in Religious Studies
• Religious Ethics and the Environment
• Environmental Thought
• Religions of the Globe
• Religion, Ethics and Medicine

Publication Highlights

Books

Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia University Press, 2003)

Articles and Book Chapters

"Religion and the Meaning of Ecology," in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, Roger Gottlieb, ed., Oxford UP, 2006.

"Religion and Environmentalism in America," in Faith In America, [Three Volumes], Charles Lippy, ed., Greenwood Press, 2006.

"Writing Straight With Crooked Lines: Holmes Rolston’s Eco-Theology and Theodicy," in Nature, Value, and Duty: Life on Earth with Holmes Rolston, III, Christopher Preston and Wayne Ouderkirk, eds.  Springer Press, 2006.

"Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection" in Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives, Past and Present, R.J. Berry, ed., T&T Clark International, 2006

"The Ecological Body" [on Rachel Carson]. Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 85 (4-5), 2003

"One Step Up, Two Steps Back: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Savagery in Darwin’s  Evolutionary Theory."Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 84(3-4), 2002

"Roots of Concern with Nonhuman Animals in Biomedical Ethics," in bioethics issue of Journal of the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, 40(1), 1999 (with David H. Smith, and Charles McCarthy)