March 05, 2013

A faculty member’s book examines examines the importance of wildness in our lives

MIT Press has published a volume on connecting with wild nature, edited by Patricia Hasbach, a faculty member in the ecopsychology certificate program.

Patricia Hasbach, an adjunct faculty member who works with the Ecopsychology in Counseling certificate program, recently co-edited The Rediscovery of the Wild, a compilation of articles by prominent environmental authors, with Peter Kahn. The book is available from MIT press.

From the editorial synopsis:

We often enjoy connecting with a city park or backyard garden, but The Rediscovery of the Wild makes the provocative case for the necessity of connecting with wild nature that is unencumbered and unmediated by technology. We can love or fear the wild. We are strengthened and nurtured by it, and much of our species’ evolutionary need for wildness still exists within us. Authors including Dave Foreman, Ian McCallum, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Jack Turner, and Cristina Eisenberg offer a range of perspectives on topics such as the wild within, including primal sexuality and aggression; birding as a portal to wildness; children’s fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing; the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work of conservation.

Learn more about Hasbach’s work.