I presented this along with Madhu Prakash at the AERA Preconference Seminar in New Orleans in April 2011.

1. AERA Division B Pre-Conference Seminar
EcoJustice and Environmental Justice
Educators in Conversation: Exploring
Intersections and Tensions
Madhu Prakash: Pennsylvania State University
Kurt Love: Central Connecticut State University

3. Reflections,
Connections & Implications

4. Zoe Weil & How We Might Change Teaching

5. AERA Division B Pre-Conference Seminar
EcoJustice and Environmental Justice
Educators in Conversation: Exploring
Intersections and Tensions
Madhu Prakash: Pennsylvania State University
Kurt Love: Central Connecticut State University

6. EcoJustice & Aesthetics
Day 2

7. “Shapeshifter”
Brian Jungen

10. You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight—
and it is possible: its great strength is
breaking into my body.
I have faith in the night.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by David Whyte in Fire in the
Earth)

11. “Now he seeks to become nobody for a while, to disappear into
the woods so that the person he really is might find him.”
(Plotkin, 2003, p. 244)

13. Reflections,
Connections & Implications

14. What is the Earth?

15. What is the Earth?

16. What is the Earth?

17. What is the Earth?

18. What is the Earth?

19. Ecological Self &
Ecospiritual Self

20. Hula
“Hula is an important part of our Hawaiian culture.
It leads us to who we are as people today.”

21. Aloha & Haole

22. Aloha & Haole
Aloha
“Together, we breathe the sacred breath”
A consciousness that we are inescapably interwoven with
each other and the earth.
What we do to each other and the earth, we do to ourselves.

23. Aloha & Haole
Haole
“One who is without sacred breath”
A consciousness that does not include an awareness that we are
inescapably interwoven with each other and the earth.
A consciousness only of self and an ignorance of one’s energetic and
spiritual impact. Often comes with little or no understanding of
spirituality or the purpose of one’s soul (soul loss).

24. Mind & Soul in Nature
From Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature (1979)
“[M]ind became, for me, a reflection of large parts and many parts of the
natural world outside the thinker...[The human mind] was the more
complex, the aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people
that reflected nature...I was seeing there the roots of human symmetry,
beauty and ugliness, aesthetics, the human being’s very aliveness and little
bit of wisdom. His [sic] wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of
making beautiful objects are just as ‘animal’ as his cruelty. After all, the
very word ‘animal’ means ‘endowed with mind or spirit’ (animus)” (p. 5).
From Bill Plotkin’s Soulcra$ (2003)
“The individual human soul is one element of the fabric of nature. You are
not in any way separate from nature. The wild world reflects your essence
back to you just like a still lake reflects your image” (p. 216).

25. Mind & Soul
Reflected in Nature
From Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature (1979)
“[M]ind became, for me, a reflection of large parts and many parts of the
natural world outside the thinker...[The human mind] was the more
complex, the aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people
that reflected nature...I was seeing there the roots of human symmetry,
beauty and ugliness, aesthetics, the human being’s very aliveness and little
bit of wisdom. His [sic] wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of
making beautiful objects are just as ‘animal’ as his cruelty. After all, the
very word ‘animal’ means ‘endowed with mind or spirit’ (animus)” (p. 5).
From Bill Plotkin’s Soulcra$ (2003)
“The individual human soul is one element of the fabric of nature. You are
not in any way separate from nature. The wild world reflects your
essence back to you just like a still lake reflects your image” (p. 216).

26. Transcends Humanity
Spirit
Soul
Nature & Soul

27. Soul
“The earth provides us
with not only the means
to be physically born into
this world but also the
spiritual means to
recognize our deeper
identities.” (Plotkin,
2003, p. 239)
Nature & Soul

28. Footpath = Your View of Reality?
Home Building
Nature?
Sidewalk Sidewalk
Driveway Parking Lot
Vehicle

29. “SPIRITUALITY”
What mindsets “spirituality”?
How do we know it when we see it?
Where does “spirituality” come from?