What is Mother Earth? A Name, A Meme, A Conspiracy

The Research Seminar Series in Religious Studies and Theology invites you to an open lecture with Sam Gill, Professor Emeritus in Religious Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Gill gives a lecture about  "What is Mother Earth? A Name, A Meme, A Conspiracy".

Abstract

A rich appreciation of Mother Earth—in the entwined contexts of Native American, Australian Aboriginal, and Western intellectual history—is accomplished in this lecture using new perspectives and strategies: Mother Earth as name, meme, and conspiracy. These approaches are developed and illustrated to offer insight into the dynamics of identity formation of individual cultures and amalgams of cultures, always occurring in the context of creative encounters. Projecting beyond the Mother Earth example, the lecture proposes a vision of the academic study of cultures and religions that focuses on gesture, repetition, body, and movement and a study that embraces coherence, in the presence of the constant threat of incoherence, as being often more important than meaning.

All are welcome to attend.