Meet the Faculty

Lisa Sideris

• Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D., Indiana University, 2000

Contact Information

Background

• Fellow, Rachel Carson Center for Environmental Studies, Munich, Germany. July-Dec., 2010
• Co-applicant, “Virtuous Empathy,” Grant from University of Chicago, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, 2010. Richard Miller, PI.
• New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Grant 2010. http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/13356.html Project: “Nature-Study and the Empathic Imagination 1900-Present.”
• New Frontiers Exploration Fellowship 2010
• Participant, Interdisciplinary Faculty Workshop on Empathy (sponsored by IU's Institute for Advanced Study and Poynter Center)  2009-2010
• Trustees Teaching Award, Indiana University, 2008
• Active Learning Grant, Indiana University, 2008
• Global Citizenship Course Development Grant (Course: "Religion, Ethics, and the Global Environmental Crisis") 2007
• Indiana University Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, 2006
• Fellow, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University (Darwin and Religion Project), 2000-2001
• Templeton Foundation Science and Religion Course Competition Prize, 1999-2000
• Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship, 1999-2000
• Religious Studies Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, 1999

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. I came back to Indiana’s Religious Studies Department both because of the strong interdisciplinary profile of the program, and because of the natural beauty of IU and Bloomington.
  In the broadest sense, I am interested in the value and ethical significance of natural processes. My areas of research include environmental ethics, and the science-religion interface, including evolution controversies past and present. Much of my research focuses on conflict and compatibility between scientific (particularly Darwinian) and religious interpretations of nature and natural processes.  My first book Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia, 2003) critiques the tendency of Christian environmental ethics, or “ecological theology,” to misconstrue or ignore Darwinian theory, and examines the problems this creates for developing a realistic ethic toward nature and animals. My more recent research has focused on Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring (1962) arguably marks the beginning of the environmental movement in America and abroad. I have also written about the religious and moral dimensions of what Carson called a "sense of wonder" for nature, and the role of empathy and wonder in Carson’s writings on the sea. I co-edited (with philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore) a volume of interdisciplinary essays on Carson's life and work, titled Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY, 2008).  My current research centers on two projects. The first pertains to the role of wonder and enchantment in (and with) science, nature, and religion, and the variety of ways in which scientific narratives, particularly those involving evolution, are being "re-enchanted" and recast as mythopoeic stories with moral content. A second project examines nature-study movements for children, from the 19th century to the present, and the way in which scientific and religious perspectives have given, and are giving, impetus to these initiatives.
  I am actively involved in IU’s Individualized Major Program and have taught in the Human Biology Program.

Research Interests

• Religion and Nature
• Environmental and Animal Ethics
• Science and Religion
• Evolution controversies
• Religion and Bioethics
• Environmental History and Literature

Courses Recently Taught

• Evolution and Ethics
• Religion and Animals
• Bioethics and Literature (Human Biology)
• Religion, Ethics, and the Global Environmental Crisis
• Knowledge, Ethics, and the Environment
• Religious Ethics and the Environment
• Religion and Bioethics
• Environmental Thought

Publication Highlights

Books

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

Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY Press, 2008)

Articles and Book Chapters

2009 (2008) “Fact and Fiction, Fear and Wonder: The Legacy of Rachel Carson.”

Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 91 (3-4) 2 (actual publication date Aug. 2009)

 “Evolving Environmentalism: Ecotheology in Creation/Evolution Controversies.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion. 11(1). Mar 2007.

“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.

“Intelligent Design, Science Education, and Public Reason.” Poynter Center White Paper. Robert A. Crouch, Richard B. Miller, Lisa H. Sideris. Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, Indiana University. 2006. http://poynter.indiana.edu/Science%20&%20Public%20Reason.pdf

“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)