Norman Wirzba pursues research and teaching interests at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. He lectures frequently in Canada, the United States, and Europe. In particular, his research is centered on a recovery of the doctrine of creation and a restatement of humanity in terms of its creaturely life. He is currently the director of a multi-year, Henry Luce-Foundation-funded projected entitled “Facing the Anthropocene.” In this project, housed at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, he is working with an international team of scholars to rethink several academic disciplines in light of challenges like climate change, food insecurity, biotechnology and genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, species extinction, and the built environment.  

Professor Wirzba has published several books, including Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land, The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight, Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity, From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (in its 2^nd Edition), and (with Fred Bahnson) Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation. He also has edited several books, including The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land and The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry.

Watch the Keynote

Interdisciplinary Explorations of Food, Vocation and Identity in Higher Education

Laura Wright
Western Carolina University

Jarred White
Farm & Faith Partnerships Project Manager

David Allen
Project Manager & Coordinator of the Come to the Table Program

Beginning at 2:40 p.m., moderated by Catherine Wright with a Panel Keynote Address from Laura Wright, a professor of English at Western Carolina University, where she specializes in postcolonial literatures and theory, ecocriticism, and animal studies. Her monographs include Writing Out of All the Camps: J. M. Coetzee's Narratives of Displacement (Routledge, 2006 and 2009) and Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial Environment (U of Georgia P, 2010). She is lead editor (with Jane Poyner and Elleke Boehmer) of Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works (MLA, 2014). Her most recent monograph, The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror, was published by the U of Georgia P in 2015. Her edited collection Through a Vegan Studies Lens: Textual Ethics and Lived Activism was published in February 2019 by the University of Nevada Press.

Catherine Wright
Executive Director, Collaborative for the Common Good
Associate Professor of Religion & Philosophy
Wingate University

Shea Watts
Religion Professor
Wingate University