A panel of professors, authors, visual artists and editors will be exploring that subject next week at at The College of New Rochelle.

"The Mind in the Age of Environmental Destruction: A Panel Discussion” will take place on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, at 7 p.m. in Romita Auditorium on the Main Campus of The College of New Rochelle. Panelists for this extraordinary evening to discuss issues of the environment are author Daniel B. Smith, the Mary Ellen Donnelly Critchlow Chair in English, at CNR; Robert Sullivan, author of The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant; Katie Holten, award-winning visual artist and creator of the Tree Museum, a public artwork celebrating the centennial of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx; Chad Harbach, executive editor of n+1 magazine, the New York-based journal of politics, literature, and culture, and author of the forthcoming novel The Art of Fielding; and Susan Opotow, a social psychologist at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and co-editor of Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature.
According to Professor Smith, "We’re already well aware that environmental problems, from air pollution to water toxicity to climate change, affect the health of the planet and the health of our bodies. What this panel is meant to investigate--what has until recently been much less widely discussed--is the effect that environmental problems may be having on our minds. For thousands of years humankind had a relatively stable relationship with the natural world. What does it mean for us--psychologically, spiritually, therapeutically--when that relationship is radically altered?”
The Panel Discussion is Free and Open to the Public.