Eileen Crist

Biographical Information
"Eileen Crist received her Bachelor's degree from Haverford College in sociology in 1982 and her doctoral degree from Boston University in 1994, also in sociology, with a specialization in life sciences and society. Her early research focused on animal behavior science and the ways scientists conceptualize, or avoid conceptualizing, the question of animal mind. Her interest in this topic was driven by the conviction that western discourses, heavily influenced by anthropocentric doctrines, have underestimated the real depths of animal awareness. She continues to hold an active interest in this topic, while increasingly devoting her energies to the foremost crisis of our time: the destruction of the Earth's biological diversity and wild places. This irreversible, far-reaching loss has not received sufficient attention in academic and public arenas, with so many people staying myopically focused on the economy, energy issues, ! ! ! depletion of resources, technological fixes, sociopolitical strife, and other strictly-human concerns.

"She has been teaching at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society since 1997, where she is advisor for the undergraduate program Humanities, Science, and Environment. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind and coeditor of Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis. She is also author of numerous academic papers and contributor to the late journal Wild Earth. She lives in Blacksburg, Virginia with her husband Rob Patzig."

Affiliations

 * Member, Alliance for Wild Ethics

BOOKS AND EDITED VOLUMES

 * 2010 	Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis. First editor. Co-edited with H. Bruce Rinker, Cambridge: MIT Press.
 * 2004 	Scientists on Gaia: The New Century. Co-edited with Steve Schneider, Jim Miller, and Penelope Boston, Cambridge: MIT Press.
 * 2000 	Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 245pp.