Sarah McFarland Taylor is an American academic and author. She is currently Associate Professor of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies at
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
, where she also teaches in the Environmental Policy and Culture Program and in American Studies. Areas of research focus include studies of media, religion, and culture; public moral engagement in environmental issues; and consumerism, marketing, and popular culture. She holds a Bachelor's degree from
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
, a Master's degree from
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
, and a doctorate in Religion and American Culture from the
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...
. As of 2019, she earned an additional advanced degree in “Media History, Philosophy, and Criticism” from the Graduate School of Media Studies at
The New School for Public Engagement
The Schools of Public Engagement is one of the academic divisions that compose The New School, a private research university located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. The college is split into five schools; Milano School of ...
.
Taylor has held numerous fellowships, including the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...
Postdoctoral Fellowship, a
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
The Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation) is a nonpartisan, non-profit based in Princeton, New Jersey that aims to strengthen American democracy by “cultivating the talent, ideas, ...
Career Enhancement Fellowship, a
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
Humanities Fellowship, a Wabash Center Fellowship, and a Louisville Institute Fellowship.
[Northwestern University faculty profile](_blank)
/ref> For the 2008-2009 school year, she held the Senior Research Fellowship at the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School
The University of Chicago Divinity School is a private graduate institution at the University of Chicago dedicated to the training of academics and clergy across religious boundaries. Formed under Baptist auspices, the school today lacks any s ...
. Taylor is currently a member of University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center for the Study of Media, Religion, and Culture’s “Public Religion and Public Scholarship in the Digital Age” working group.
Her 2007 book ''Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology'' won two awards from the Catholic Press Association The Catholic Media Association, formerly the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada, is an association of American and Canadian newspaper and media specialists specialized on reporting on the Catholic Church. Founded in 1911, it ...
for Best Book on Gender Issues as well as Best Book on Social Concerns. Published by the Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
press, ''Green Sisters'' highlights Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
religious sisters who have taken up environmental activism, including the Dominican Sisters
The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of Cal ...
' Genesis Farm, the Green Mountain Monastery, White Violet Center for Eco-Justice of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods
The Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods are an apostolic congregation of Catholic women founded by Saint Theodora Guerin (known colloquially as Saint Mother Theodore) at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, in 1840. Mother Theodo ...
, and the Sisters of the Presentation straw-bale welcome center.
In "What If Religions Had Ecologies?: The Case for Reinhabiting Religious Studies" (Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
The ''Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture'' (''JSRNC'') is a peer-reviewed academic journal on religious studies. The journal is the official journal of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. The ...
, Summer 2007), Taylor argues that meaningful connections need to be forged between the literary realm of ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It wa ...
and religious studies, and more attention needs to be paid to the natural history of the physical environments that religious communities inhabit and to how those communities shape and are in turn shaped by those environments. When physical environments are considered as integral parts of academic religious inquiry and no longer rendered invisible or relegated to mere ‘backdrops’ for the larger human drama, contends Taylor, scholars will be able to provide a more nuanced sense of religion as it is truly lived in context. Taylor continues to theorize the concept of "spiritual ecology
Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia recognizing that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of Spiritual Ecology assert a nee ...
" in her work.
Taylor’s most recent book is ECOPIETY: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue (NYU Press, October 2019). Taylor makes the case that a detailed, multi-channel, cross-platform approach to cultural analysis is critical to understanding the kind of important “work” taking place as mediated popular culture plays an integral role in the “greening” of American moral sensibilities. Ecopiety delves into the complex and contested processes of remaking our world and rescripting the future in the digital age—a time when storytelling processes themselves are shaping and being shaped by new media outlets and digital sharing technologies.
Exploring the power of story and mediamaking to shift social energetics and effect social transformation, the author challenges mediated stories of dour and individualized ecopiety. This book in turn highlights media interventions that interrupt narratives of ecopiety and “restory the earth,” while engendering the power of collective action, civic engagement, delight and play.
Taylor’s most recent research and writing project is called No Planet B: Marketing Mars and Manifest Destiny and juxtaposes the marketing of Mars colonization with environmental activist "No Planet B" media messaging, examining the implications of both for imagined planetary and extra-planetary futures.
Works
* ''Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology'' (2007)
* "Shopping and Consumption"
* "Shopping, Religion, and the Sacred 'Buyosphere" in Religion and Popular Culture in America, 3rd Edition
*Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue, https://nyupress.org/9781479891313/ecopiety/
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Sarah McFarland
Living people
American non-fiction environmental writers
American religious writers
Women religious writers
American religion academics
Northwestern University faculty
American studies scholars
Year of birth missing (living people)
21st-century American women writers
Brown University alumni
Dartmouth College alumni
Media studies writers