Current Events
Can Religion Be Green?
Sikh Approaches to Environmentalism
JUNIATA COLLEGE
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, USA
Religions across the globe preach the importance of faith and good works, but can a religion also be environmentally-friendly?
Susan Prill, Associate Professor of Religion
at Juniata College, will explain how Sikhs worldwide are "going green," at a lecture to be held on Tuesday, March 19, 2013, at 4:30 pm, in the Neff Lecture
Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science on the campus of Juniata College in Huntingdon.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
The talk is one of a series
of Bookend Lectures held once a month throughout the academic year by
Juniata faculty.
Prill's lecture, titled "Can Religion be Green? Sikh Approaches to
Environmentalism," will focus first on a summary of the Sikh religion. In addition to providing background on the
Sikh religion, which came to the forefront for many Americans when a murderer shot and killed six people at a gurdwara in Wisconsin last August, Prill
will explain how Sikhism also serves as an environmentally sensitive
tradition.
She will explain how Sikhs are reinterpreting Sikh scripture to engage
with the environmental movement around the globe.
Prill, a Huntingdon resident, came to Juniata in 2006 as an Assistant Professor of Religion, specializing in world religions. She previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Her main area of teaching specialization centers on Sikhism and Hinduism. She has also taught courses in yoga and yogic philosophies and Buddhism. Her specific area of research concerns Namdev, a 13th-century saint who was is an important figure in, inter alia, the Sikh tradition, and his depiction in popular religious art.
She earned a bachelor's degree in religion in 1996 from Bard College in
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and went on to earn a Master's degree in
South Asian studies in 2000 from the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. She earned her doctoral degree in 2005 from the School of
Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in London,
England.
At Juniata she teaches such courses as World Religions, Sikhism, Islam
and Yoga Studies.
She recently published a chapter-article in the edited
volume "Sikhism in Global Context."
She is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the Association for Asian Studies.
March 12, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: Manmohan Singh Luthra (Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania, USA), March 16, 2013, 1:55 AM.
Professor Susan Prill: Sat Sri Akal. I have read your article and bio with great interest. We at Tri-State Sikh Cultural Society, Monroeville, Pennsylvania, USA, have created Guru Har Rai Arboretum. 17 PA trees and 50 Flowering Shrubs have been planted in the Fall of 2012. We are so anxious to see them bloom in the coming spring. We would like you to visit our gurdwara any time. I live in Lower Burrell. Please connect with us and guide us.