Ecowomanism

Overview

"Melanie Harris has written an engaging and provocative book that deserves to be widely read. She underscores the significance of African cosmology and African-American history to ecowomanist ways of being in the world. Her articulation of these broad cosmological and historical frameworks for effective environmental justice is brilliant and timely.” --Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, and co-author Journey of the Universe

 “Essential reading in these extraordinarily troubling times.” Race/Knitter Race and Knitter have put together a collection of interesting essays on a compelling cutting-edge approach to theology of religions that is well worth the effort to read. --Hartford Seminary, CT Lucinda Mosher

"In this rich and powerful work, Harris introduces the concept of ecowomanism by clearly and effectively laying out its methodology, applications, and significance. This book is a critically important work of justice deeply rooted in the experiences and history of Black women's long struggle against eco-racism and all forms of oppression." --Diana L. Hayes, author, No Crystal Stair: Womanist Spirituality

"Harris deftly achieves that elusive goal: a book that will be highly relevant not only for the academy, but also for the church and for social movements. It will be invaluable for courses in environmental and religious ethics, spirituality, Black liberation theologies, womanist ethics and theologies, and African American religious thought." --Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, author, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation

"Harris rightly asks important questions: What are the relationships between human communities and the Earth? In what ways do religions contribute, or deprive, communities of Earth knowledge? Is there an urgency today for justice that calls forth womanist understandings of oppression of peoples and ecologies? This is not a read and weep book; this is a stand up and shout book!" --John A. Grim, co-editor, Worldviews and Ecology

Scholarship on African American history and culture has often neglected the tra­dition of African American women who engage in theological and religious reflection on their ethical and moral responsibility to care for the earth. Melanie Harris argues that African American women make distinctive contributions to the environmental justice movement in the ways that they theologize, theorize, practice spiritual activism, and come into religious understandings about our re­lationship with the earth. Incorporating ele­ments of her family history to set the stage for her argument, Harris intersperses her academic reflections with her own personal stories and anecdotes.

This unique text stands at the intersection of several academic disciplines: womanist theol­ogy, eco-theology, spirituality, and theological aesthetics.

Melanie L. Harris is Founding Director of African American and Africana Studies and Professor of Religion and Ethics at Texas Christian Univer­sity,. Dr. Harris also serves as an American Council of Education Fellow at the University of Denver. She is author of Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics, and co-editor of Faith, Femi­nism and Scholarship (both Palgrave Macmillan). She holds a PhD from Union Theological Semi­nary, New York.