Carol White

Educational Background

• Ph.D., University of Denver, Iliff School of Theology

Research Interests

• Philosophy of religion
• Religion and critical theory
• Process philosophy
• Religious naturalism
• Animal and human connections in Western thought

Teaching Interests

• Philosophy of religion
• Religious naturalism
• Theories of religion

Recent Awards

• Presidential Professor, 2018-21

Selected Publications

BOOKS

White, Carol Wayne. 2016. Black Lives and Sacred Humanity: The Emergence of an African-American Religious Naturalism. Fordham University Press. [Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Titles.]

White, Carol Wayne. 2009. The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism. State University of New York Press.

White, Carol Wayne. 2002. Poststructuralism, Feminism, and Religion: Triangulating Positions. Humanity Books.

JOURNAL ARTICLES, ESSAYS, AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“Religious Naturalisms.” In Religion, Science, and Technology. Edited by Whitney Bauman and Lisa Stenmark. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024: 181-198.

“Race.” Chapter 8 in Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology. 3rd Edition. Edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin J. O’Brien. New York: Routledge, 2023:https://www.routledge.com/Grounding-Religion-A-Field-Guide-to-the-Study…

“A Poetics of Nature: Religious Naturalism, Multiplicities and Affinities.” In Religion, Materialism and Ecology (Routledge Series in Environmental Humanities). Edited by Peter Scott, Kate Rigby, and Sigur Bergmann. New York: Routledge Press: 2023: 133-150. https://www.routledge.com/Religion-Materialism-and-Ecology/Bergmann-Rig…

“Planetary Thinking, Agency, and Relationality: Religious Naturalism's Plea.” Chapter 13 in Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking. Edited by Karen Bray, Heather Eaton and Whitney Bauman. New York, NY: Fordham Press, 2023. https://www.fordhampress.com/9781531503062/earthly-things/

“Capturing the Beauty of Materialism: Black Bodies, Ontic Desires, and Processes of Humanization.” Chapter 14 in 20th-anniversary issue of Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion. Edited by Anthony Pinn. Minneapolis: MN: Fortress Press, 2022: 243-52. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv29sfz06.18 or https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv29sfz06.18

“Human, All Too Human?: A Religious Naturalist’s Response to Balthrop-Lewis’ Vision of Thoreau’s Admirable Humanity.” Invited Essay Contributor for Book Forum on Alda Balthrop-Lewis’s Thoreau’s Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021.) Marginalia (the religion channel of the LA Review of Books): December 9, 2022. https://themarginaliareview.com/human-all-too-human/

"Black Lives Matter and the New Materialism: Past Truths, Present Struggles, and Future Promises.” In Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter: Essays on a Moment and a Movement. Edited by Christopher Cameron and Luke Sinitere. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP, 2021: 89-124.

"Religious Naturalisms." In Bloomsbury Religion in North America. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Accessed August 20, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350971097.006.

"The Process of Animalization, Human Exceptionalism, and The Racialization of Myriad Nature: A Response from Religious Naturalism." Critical Essay in Syndicate’s Symposium on Karen M. Morin’s Carceral Space, Prisoners and Animals (New York, NY, 2018). August 2021. https://syndicate.network/symposia/philosophy/carceral-space-prisoners-and-animals/

“Humanism in the Americas.” In The Oxford Handbook of Humanism. (Printed Version.) Edited by Anthony Pinn. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021: 73-108.

"Humanism in the Americas." In The Oxford Handbook of Humanism. (Online Version.) Edited by Anthony B. Pinn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 1-39.

“Anna Julia Cooper: Radical Relationality and the Ethics of Interdependence.” In African American Political Thought: A Collected History. Edited by Jack Turner and Melvin Rogers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020: 330-363.

“Big Miracle and Religious Naturalism: Rescuing Myriad Nature from Popular Fantasies of Nature Rescue.” In Natural Communions, Reflections on Ecospirituality (Faith in Nature: Religion and Public Life) Volume 40. Edited by Gabriel R. Ricci. NY: Routledge, 2019: 176-192.

“Re-Envisioning Hope: Anthropogenic Climate Change, Learned Ignorance, and Religious Naturalism.” In Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion, Vol. 53, no. 2 (June 2018): 570-595.

"African American Religious Naturalism and the Question of the Human." In Handbook of Religious Naturalism. Edited by Donald Crosby and Jerome Stone. New York: Routledge, 2018: 156-168.

"Polyamorous Bastards: James Baldwin's Opening to a Queer African-American Religious Naturalism." In Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies. Edited by Whitney Bauman and Lisa Stenmark. Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books, 2018: 107-128.

"Stubborn Materiality: African-American Religious Naturalism and Becoming Our Humanity." In Entangled Worlds: Science, Religion, and Materiality. Edited by Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2017: 249-273.

"Religious Naturalism, Race and Ethnicity." In Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology: 2nd Edition. Edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard R. Bohannon II, and Kevin J. O'Brien. New York: Routledge, 2017: 77-93.

"Black Lives, Sacred Humanity, and The Racialization of Nature, or Why America Needs Religious Naturalism Today." In American Journal of Theology & Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 3, September 2017: 109-122.