New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion is a multi-year program that aims to develop a new, comprehensive scholarly vision of biophysical and human nature as the basis for a new vision of science and religion. New Visions also seeks to create a unique research and educational climate at UCSB that promotes progress in the understanding of nature, science, and religion, and aims to provide a credible scholarly resource on nature, science, and religion to the general public.
Administered by Dr. Jim Proctor, associate professor in the Department of Geography, and governed by a steering committee of fourteen UCSB faculty - drawn from affiliations ranging from the Institute for Theoretical Physics to Religious Studies - and three external faculty, New Visions will sponsor two academic workshops involving eighteen core scholarly participants, as well as a public conference that will result in a major published volume. A distinguished visiting professor series, faculty seminar, undergraduate course (available online to the public), graduate seminars, graduate student training and support, web and television communications, and extensive publicity, outreach, and long-term fundraising will ensure maximum academic and public benefit from the program.
Critical to the implementation of New Visions is the participation of graduate students. The New Visions steering committee held a competition in late 2003 to select six outstanding UCSB graduate students for graduate teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and/or research stipends for 2004-05. Applications for all 2005-06 awards are due on Friday, December 17, 2004. Visit http://www.newvisions.ucsb.edu for further information.
Congratulations to the six 2004-2005 award recipients!
Jennifer Bernstein, Geography (Research Stipend)
Jennifer Bernstein is a master's student in the Department of Geography. She received her B.S. from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her major interests are forest ecology and management, Western American environmental history, and the role of boundaries in the cultural landscape. She has recently become interested in how the environment is portrayed in popular culture, and her master's thesis addresses how the natural environment is used as a marketing tool in print advertising.
Evan Berry, Religious Studies (Research Assistant, Research Stipend)
Evan Berry is a graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies. His research focuses on the intersection of nature and religion in the modern West. Such a project necessarily scrutinizes the theological and philosophical antecedents to contemporary ecological movements, and attempts to articulate the modes of thinking about nature that permeate both environmental and religious communities. The methodological basis for his research aims to connect a rich historical deconstruction of textual traditions and utilizes sociological techniques to empirically ground such textual analysis.
Robert Geraci, Religious Studies (Research Stipend)
Robert Geraci is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religious Studies. As a cultural historian of religion, Robert is interested in how religion operates alongside other cultural endeavors, particularly science and art. His essay, "Laboratory Ritual: Experimentation and the Advancement of Science," was published in 2002 by Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.
Andrew Raaf, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management (Research Assistant)
Andrew Raaf graduated from Kansas State University in 2002 with degrees in Environmental Science and Natural Resource Management. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Environmental Science in the Bren School. Andrew is interested in habitat restoration and social ecology. In particular, his research interests lie in merging social sciences with physical sciences in ways that are consistent with environmentally ethical beliefs.
Robin Roff, Geography (Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant)
Robin holds a bachelors degree in Geography and Political Science from the University of Toronto. Specializing in natural resource management, political theory and Third World development, she graduated with honors in the spring of 2003. As a graduate student in the Department of Geography, she is interested in the capitalist appropriation of natural resources and the subsequent creation of meaning, and focusing on the current tension between biotechnology and organic modes of production.
Elizabeth Swanstrom, Comparative Literature (Research Assistant, Research Stipend)
Lisa Swanstrom is a third-year doctoral student in the Comparative Literature Program. Her research interests include 20th Century Latin-American literature, Media Theory, American science fiction, and the literature of the fantastic. Lisa's essay, "Records, Projections, and the Dixie Flatline: Character Loops in Adolfo Bioy Casares' La invención de Morel and William Gibson's Neuromancer," was recently published in a special Annex of Tinta: Selected Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference on Lusophone and Hispanic Literature and Culture. She is currently working on an analysis of religious representation in science fiction film and literature.