Brief Biography

Nancy Menning is Assistant Professor of World Religions. Her dissertation, Reading Nature Religiously: Lectio Divina, Environmental Ethics, and the Literary Nonfiction of Terry Tempest Williams (U of Iowa, 2010), articulated a process of reading nature religiously (adapted from the spiritual reading practice of lectio divina) that can serve as the foundation for an ethical relationship with the more-than-human world. In addition to her work in religious studies, Nancy has an academic and professional background in forestry and environmental studies. She is also a certified instructor in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program (insideoutcenter.org).

Teaching

Ongoing (Spring 2013): 

• World Religions: Western and Modern
• Religious Cosmologies
• Character: Making Habits for Good (ICIC mini-course)

Past:

• Death and the Soul (Ithaca Seminar; Fall 2012)
• Islam (Fall 2010 & Fall 2012)
• Indigenous Religious Traditions (Fall 2012)
• Death & Immortality (Fall 2010 & Fall 2011)
• World Religions: Western and Modern (Spring 2011 & Spring 2012)
• Mormonism in the American Imagination (Spring 2012)
• Religion & Nature (Spring 2011)
• Religion & Criminal Justice (Fall 2011)
• Edges and Interfaces: Defining and Transcending Boundaries (ICIC "Insight" mini-course; Spring 2012)

Upcoming (Fall 2013):

• Death of Nature: Mourning Environmental Losses (Ithaca Seminar)
• Death & Immortality

Other courses in development:

• Creation Narratives in Religion and Science
• Spiritual but not Religious: Human Quests for Meaning

Active Research Projects

• Killing grief: Religious perspectives on environmental mourning (book chapter)
• Robert Adams, the Edenic narrative, and the religious imagination (journal article)
• Quantum religion: Teaching cosmologies in the religious studies classroom (journal article)