Session 14: Ecotheology and Love: The Converging Poetics of Sohrab Sepehri and James Baldwin, the book

Abstract:

In Ecotheology and Love: The Converging Poetics of Sohrab Sepehri and James Baldwin, Bahar Davary points to the interrelation of religion, poetry, and ecology from a comparative perspective with an emphasis on decoloniality. This work shows how authors Sohrab Seperhi and James Baldwin sought social justice by building their work on love and an authentic way of knowing the world based on an interconnected knowledge of the self. The layers of depth in Sepehri and Baldwin’s works and their immediacy for our time has yet to be fully understood, but through Ecotheology and Love, Davary takes a significant step towards achieving such a fuller understanding.

Suggested Reading: 

• Ecotheology and Love: The Converging Poetics of Sohrab Sepehri and James Baldwin (Environment and Religion in Feminist-Womanist, Queer, and Indigenous Perspectives) 

Speaker’s Biography:

Bahar Davary, PhD, has been a member of the faculty at USD since 2005. She is a Professor of Religious Studies, and an affiliate member of the Department of Ethnic Studies.  Dr. Davary’s course repertoire includes: World Religions; Exploring Religious Meaning;  Islamic Thought & Culture; Islam, Women, & Literature. She also teaches an Honors team-taught course Women in Islam and Confucianism and courses as part of the SYE program in Florence and Study Abroad program in Paris and London. Her courses aim at uncovering unexamined biases, simplistic binary distinctions, and understanding complex dynamics of power and privilege in the study of religion. Professor Davary’s research and publications are broadly within the field of Comparative Study of Religion with a focus in Islamic studies. Her first book Women and the Qur’an: A Study in Islamic hermeneutics (2009) focuses on development, continuity, and change in the portrayal of woman with an emphasis on dynamic identities of the texts. Her later works center on the development of Muslim feminist scholarship, especially as it grapples with the challenges of Orientalism, colonialism, patriarchal Islamism, and neo-orientalism.  Dr. Davary has published several articles in academic journals, encyclopedias, and other forums. She has given over a hundred academic and public lectures locally, nationally, and internationally.