2026–2027 INC BOOK CLUB: THE “NEW” ANIMISM, First Meeting

About

Organized by: The Institute for Nature and Culture, DePaul University

What: A year-long book club on animism as a worldview

When: One to two meetings each quarter

First session: Thursday, November 19th at 6:00-7:30 p.m. (Zoom: email Liam (lhenegha@depaul.edu for link please).

Also email Professors Liam Heneghan or Sean Kirkland (skirkla1@depaul.edu) for the first readings

Background

The Institute for Nature and Culture is organizing a year-long book club devoted to the question of animism: the notion that the material or natural world is thoroughly infused with an organizing, directing, or life-giving power of some kind, one that is in some sense agentic. Animism is adjacent to pantheism, panpsychism, and hylozoism—all perspectives may arise during our discussions.

Our aim is not to make animists of us all (though that would be fine, of course). It is to understand the resurgence of animistic thinking across contemporary environmental thought.

What is it to attribute personhood to non-human beings, to attribute mind to entities often thought to be non-conscious, and to consider all matter to be alive? These are three distinct but questions, but we will explore how they relate to each other.

Readings

Each quarter we propose core readings that we will all engage with, along with a suite of suggestions. Most readings are excerpts, which we will distribute in advance; the exception is Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think, which we will read in full. Participants can and should supplement these with others that have inspired them. The quarterly themes are emphases rather than strict divisions, and some readings will speak to more than one.

Autumn: Ontology: The Personhood of the World

Core readings

“Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View,” A. Irving Hallowell

Is a River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane (excerpt)