Faculty

Terminal Degree

Ph.D. 2010, University of Iowa, Religious Studies: Ethics, Philosophy, Theology, and Culture

Brief Biography

Nancy Menning is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Environmental Studies & Sciences. (From 2010 to 2017, she was Assistant Professor of World Religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religion.) She completed her PhD in 2010 from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa after being ABD in a joint degree program in forest ecosystem management and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nancy combines her background in social forestry and environmental studies with her work in religious studies to advance the environmental humanities and to foster simultaneous human and ecological flourishing. Her recent work has emphasized religious aspects of climate change narratives, spiritual practices for cultivating environmental virtues, rituals for mourning environmental losses, and narrative strategies for integrating religious and scientific perspectives.

Recent Publications

• A myth for the sixth mass extinction: telling Noah’s story during a climate crisis. Religions 13.3 (2022):243. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030243.

• Review of Brian Treanor, Melancholic Joy: On Life Worth Living; February 2022; Reading Religion (https://readingreligion.org/books/melancholic-joy).

• Review of Mark I. Wallace, When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World; March 2021; Reading Religion (https://readingreligion.org/books/when-god-was-bird).

• Review of Diane Eshin Rizzetto, Deep hope: Zen guidance for staying steadfast when the world seems hopeless; November 2020; Reading Religion (https://readingreligion.org/books/deep-hope).

• Review of Jim Antal, Climate church, climate world: how people of faith must work for change; August 2020; Reading Religion (https://readingreligion.org/books/climate-church-climate-world-0).

• Interrogating faith: Using literature to teach religion and nature. Pp. 126-137 in: Teaching Religion and Literature (Routledge, 2019), Daniel Boscaljon and Alan Levinovitz, eds. (https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-Religion-and-Literature/Boscaljon-Levinovitz/p/book/9781138587908)

• Review of Kerry Mitchell, Spirituality and the state: managing nature and experience in America's national parks; September 2018; Reading Religion (http://readingreligion.org/books/spirituality-and-state).

• Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds by Bernd Brunner, Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt, and Birds Art Life by Kyo Maclear [omnibus review]. The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada. 16.2 (2018), Article 27.
  Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol16/iss2/27

• Religion for non-human animals. Teaching Theology & Religion 21.1 (2018): 59.
  Read-only PDF available here: http://rdcu.be/FehW

• Review of Miguel De La Torre, Embracing Hopelessness; February 2018; Reading Religion (http://readingreligion.org/books/embracing-hopelessness).

• Narrating climate change as a rite of passage. Climatic Change 147.1-2 (2018):343-353.
  Read-only PDF available here: http://rdcu.be/BfQ3

• Review of Zachary A. Matus, Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages; October 2017; Reading Religion (http://readingreligion.org/books/franciscans-and-elixir-life).

• Environmental mourning and the religious imagination. Pp. 39-63 in: Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017), Ashlee Cunsolo Willox and Karen Landman, eds. http://www.mqup.ca/mourning-nature-products-9780773549340.php

• Review of Craig Hammond, Hope, Utopia, and Creativity in Higher Education: Pedagogical Tactics for Alternative Futures; August 2017; Reflective Teaching (http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/).

• Review of Forrest Clingerman and Kevin J. O’Brien (eds.), Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering: Calming the Storm; July 2017; Reading Religion (http://readingreligion.org/books/theological-and-ethical-perspectives-climate-engineering)

• Review of John Kaltner’s Islam: What Non-Muslims Should Know (revised and expanded edition); March 2017; Reading Religion (http://readingreligion.org/books/islam)

• Terry Tempest Williams (author entry). Pp. 3270-3278 in: Critical Survey of American Literature (Salem Press, 2016; 6 volumes), Steven Kellman, ed. 
  http://www.salempress.com/press_titles.html?book=483

• Narrating science and religion: storytelling strategies in Journey of the Universe. Diegesis: Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Narrative Research 5.2 (2016): 21-34. (co-authored with Luke Keller)
  https://www.diegesis.uni-wuppertal.de/index.php/diegesis/article/view/253

• Review of Patrick Q. Mason’s (ed) Directions for Mormon Studies in the Twenty-first Century; November 2016; Reading Religion
  http://readingreligion.org/books/directions-mormon-studies-twenty-first-century

• Reading nature religiously: cultivating environmental virtue through lectio divina. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 20.2 (2016): 169-188.