Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy Through the Liberal Arts

Winner! 2013 Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association (AESA). This is the academic Age of the Neoliberal Arts. Campuses—as places characterized by democratic debate and controversy, wide ranges of opinion typical of vibrant public spheres, and service to the larger society—are everywhere being creatively destroyed in order to accord with market and military models befitting the academic-industrial complex. While it has become increasingly clear that facilitating the sustainability movement is the great 21st century educational challenge at hand, this book asserts that it is both a dangerous and criminal development today that sustainability in higher education has come to be defined by the complex-friendly “green campus” initiatives of science, technology, engineering and management programs. By contrast, Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy Through the Liberal Arts takes the standpoints of those working for environmental and ecological justice in order to critique the unsustainable disciplinary limitations within the humanities and social sciences, as well as provide tactical reconstructive openings toward an empowered liberal arts for sustainability. Greening the Academy thus hopes to speak back with a collective demand that sustainability education be defined as a critical and moral vocation comprised of the diverse types of humanistic study that will benefit the well-being of our emerging planetary community and its numerous common locales.

Review :
"Critical, crucial, and challenging, this book initiates a dialogue essential to the survival of our planet and all the species on it, including our own. Ignored for far too long by leaders of the major social institutions around the world, this book poses the question of whether the academy will belatedly tackle the urgent policies and actions necessary to ameliorate the ecological destruction wrought by predatory capitalism. University Centers for Teaching and Learning should use this book to generate meaningful discussions of curriculum transformation wherever possible."--Dr. Julie Andrzejewski, Co-Director, Social Responsibility Masters Program, St. Cloud State University "Breaks through barriers that continue to enervate higher education's contribution to environmental education and ecological justice. By connecting radical "cognitive praxis" and authentic Indigenous perspectives to a variety of relevant topics, it offers educators motivation and maps for helping us all regain our lost balance before it is too late."--Four Arrows, Editor of Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America "This is an important and urgent book that represents a landmark for higher education. It is a book that must be heeded, and, more importantly acted upon."--Dr. Peter McLaren, Author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution