MCLA Green Living Seminar Series: Exploration of Rivers as Living, Thinking Beings
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) will host the final presentation of its 2025-2026 Green Living Seminar Series on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. in the Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, Room 121.
The presentation is free and open to the public and will be recorded and available at mcla.edu/greenliving.
Dr. Nicolas Howe, Professor of Environmental Studies at Williams College, will present "Thinking Like a River: What Restoration Restores."
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in river restoration communities in New England and the United Kingdom, Howe will explore how practitioners, activists, and artists are reimagining rivers not as hydrological systems to be engineered, but as living, thinking beings with spiritual power, moral weight, and cultural identity. The talk will move between the philosophy and anthropology of ecological restoration, asking what it means to restore not just the physical form or ecological integrity of a river, but its mind and spirit.
Howe is the author of "Landscapes of the Secular: Law, Religion, and American Sacred Space" (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and co-author of "Climate Change as Social Drama: Global Warming in the Public Sphere" (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Trained as a human geographer, he studies the cultural dimensions of environmental thought and action. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and is an avid outdoorsman.
MCLA's Green Living Seminar Series brings environmental experts, scholars, and practitioners to campus throughout the academic year to engage students and community members in conversations about sustainability, ecology, and our relationship with the natural world.
For more information, contact Elena Traister at elena.traister@mcla.edu or 413-662-5303.
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