Office: 736 Wells Hall
Office phone: (517) 353-2930
Email: vanwie12@msu.edu
Professor in Religious Studies
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Yale University 2011
PRINCIPAL SCHOLARLY INTERESTS
Environmental ethics, religion and nature, agricultural and food ethics, children and nature, religion and nonprofit organizations
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Gretel Van Wieren’s research and teaching focus on the intersection of religion, ethics, and the environment. She is author of three books — Listening at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice (Oregon State University Press, 2019), Food, Farming and Religion: Emerging Ethical Perspectives (Routledge, 2018) and Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration (Georgetown University Press, 2013). Her articles have appeared in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology, Conservation Biology, Environmental Ethics, and the Public Philosophy Journal among others. Van Wieren is recipient of a 2016 Mellon Foundation/Humanities Without Walls grant on the New Ethics of Food, and a 2015 H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest writing residency. She is founder of The New Ethics of Food Network (https://foodethics.publicphilosophyjournal.org/), a network of university and community-based partners committed to research and dialogue around a broadened understanding of food ethics and founding member of the Restoration Ecology Global Education Network (REGEN), an emerging network of professors, graduate students, and other scholars and restoration practitioners who share across disciplinary, institutional, and geographical boundaries their insights into the practice of ecological restoration, and the philosophical and spiritual resources which empower it. Van Wieren is a regular contributor to the City Creature’s blog of the Center for Humans & Nature (https://www.humansandnature.org/blog). She co-leads MSU’s Hawaii Study Away Program (https://socialscience.msu.edu/undergraduate/experiential-learning/study-away.html) and helps to facilitate the Department of Religious Studies Nonprofit Leadership Concentration (https://religiousstudies.msu.edu/majors-and-minors/).
BOOKS
Listening at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice (Oregon State University Press, 2019) — http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/listening-at-lookout-creek
Food, Farming, and Religion: Emerging Ethical Perspectives (Routledge, 2018) — https://www.routledge.com/Food-Farming-and-Religion-Emerging-Ethical-Perspectives-1st-Edition/Van-Wieren/p/book/9781138557994
Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration (Georgetown University Press, 2013) —http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/restored-earth
COURSES
- REL 185 Introduction to Nonprofits and Religion
- REL 210 Religion and the Environment
- REL 485 Religion and Nonprofit Leadership
- IAH 231A Human Culture, Nature, Ethics (in Hawaii)