Professor of Ethnobotany Robin Kimmerer to Give Public Reading at W&L
Robin Kimmerer, author and professor of ethnobotany at State University of New York-Environmental Sciences and Forestry in Syracuse, will be giving a public reading from her recent work at Washington and Lee University on Tuesday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.
The title of Kimmerer’s presentation is “Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass,” which is the working title of her new book. It is free and open to the public.
Kimmerer combines the professional knowledge of a trained botanist, the Native American perspective on land and environment that comprises an indigenous way of knowing our place in the world, and her own personal sense of place and perspective as a writer.
She is the author of a book of essays, “Gathering Moss,” published in 2003, which won the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing in 2005.
She also authored or co-authored 10 articles including “Maintaining the Mosaic: The Role of Indigenous Burning in Land Management” in the Journal of Forestry; “Traditional Ecological Knowledge: a Resource for Cross-Cultural Education in Biology” in BioScience and “Intellectual Diversity – Bringing the Native Perspective Into Natural Resources Education” in Winds of Change.
Kimmerer will also lecture in the two courses Professors John Knox and Jim Warren co-teach, Field Biogeography and Species Conservation. The Web site about the courses is sciencelit.wlu.edu.
Kimmerer’s Web site is esf.edu/efb/faculty/kimmerer.htm.
