The Environment and the 21st Century: A Thoreauvian Interlude" Subject of November 3 Lecture

SALISBURY, MD--Dr. Max Oelschlaeger, author of The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology, speaks about The Environment and the 21st Century: A Thoreauvian Interlude on Wednesday, November 3, at 7 p.m. at Salisbury State University.

Oelschlaeger's talk, part of this fall's Environmental Lecture Series at SSU, is in the Wicomico Room in the Guerrieri University Center. Admission is free and the public is invited.

Oelschlaeger is the McAllister Chair of Community, Culture and Environment at Northern Arizona University. Writing persuasively on the philosophical and religious underpinnings of various environmental positions, Oelschlaeger has been involved in writing or editing over 13 books dealing with environmental history and environmental philosophy. Two of his books, The Idea of Wilderness and Caring for Creation: A Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis, are used in environmental history courses taught at Salisbury State.

Oelschlaeger pointed out in his article on Henry David Thorea for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Global Change, Thoreau is now understood as a new renaissance man whose outlook on culture and nature was informed by a nascent evolutionary paradigm. While literateurs emphasize his literary style, his works can be read as arguing that the good life is not lived in opposition to but in harmony with nature (thereby anticipating present day discourse on sustainable development). Thoreau was not only a cultural iconoclast, but skeptical of abstract scientific or philosophic knowledge unleavened by immediate and personal contact with and later reflection on nature.

Oelschlaeger's lecture is sponsored by the Faculty Cultural Events Committee. For more information contact the Salisbury State Public Relations Office at 410-543-6030.