Role of humans is subject of LU faculty lecture
Reimagining different relationships with the “natural” world and the role of human beings amongst Creation will be the topic of the second annual Lakeland University Faculty Lecture.
Lakeland’s Associate Professor of Composition Alexis Piper, Ph.D., will provide an interactive talk entitled “Alternatives to Environmental Apocalypse: Interrupting Anthropocentrism as the Way Forward Together” on Thursday, October 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Ellwood H. May Environmental Park, 3615 Mueller Road, Sheboygan, Wis.
The evening, which is free and open to all, will take a deep dive into anthropocentrism, the philosophical perspective that places human beings at the center of importance in the universe, asserting that human lives hold greater value than those of other species.
The talk is co-sponsored by Lakeland University and Maywood Environmental Park.
Piper’s talk will also be offered at Lakeland’s campus on Tuesday, September 29, at 11 a.m. in the Bradley Theatre.
Piper will offer specific strategies for interrupting and moving beyond Anthropocentrism, the fallacy that humans are the pinnacle of creation and possess the inherent right to exploit the rest of life on planet Earth.
From rhetorically listening to Indigenous eco-orientations, to re-orienting ourselves to “deep time” perspectives, to using new scientific discoveries to deconstruct the pernicious nature/culture binary, to exploring the animist, Ecocentric, and kin-centric histories of the audience’s own ancestry and cultural traditions, Piper will draw from her years of scholarship on environmental rhetoric, nature writing, wilderness philosophy, and Indigenous eco-orientations to offer hope and a way forward together.
In addition to the talk, Woodland Dunes Nature Center in Two Rivers will attend that night to share additional resources.
In addition to teaching at Lakeland, Piper serves as the university’s composition coordinator and director of interdisciplinary studies.
She grew up on 80 acres of wooded landscape on the Niagara Escarpment in southeast Wisconsin, which has shaped her life in many ways. She earned a master's degree from UW-Oshkosh specializing in short fiction, and a Ph.D. from UW-Milwaukee, specializing in rhetoric and composition. Her dissertation focused on American nature writing and Indigenous rhetorics.
Recently, Piper has developed a scholarly interest in the rhetoric of the Early Modern “witch” hysteria.
She taught at UW-Whitewater for five years before coming to Lakeland, where she has taught the last three years.
Outside the classroom, Piper is a hiker, biker and runner, an avid reader and podcast listener, a student of how we communicate about the natural world, an animal and nature lover, indulgent companion to a Bernedoodle, a mother, daughter, sister and wife.
This is the second year of a Lakeland series which invites a Lakeland faculty member to highlight and celebrate an area of expertise in a forum that benefits the campus and wider community.
The series is an opportunity for Lakeland faculty to enrich understandings of the human condition, contemporary issues, the arts, the physical and social worlds in which we live.
