When physical environments are considered as integral parts of academic religious inquiry and no longer rendered invisible or relegated to mere ‘backdrops’ for the larger human drama, contends Taylor, scholars will be able to provide a more nuanced sense of religion as it is truly lived in context.
Taylor’s most recent book is ECOPIETY: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue (NYU Press, October 2019).
[4] Taylor makes the case that a detailed, multi-channel, cross-platform approach to cultural analysis is critical to understanding the kind of important “work” taking place as mediated popular culture plays an integral role in the “greening” of American moral sensibilities.
This book in turn highlights media interventions that interrupt narratives of ecopiety and “restory the earth,” while engendering the power of collective action, civic engagement, delight and play.
Taylor’s most recent research and writing project is called No Planet B: Marketing Mars and Manifest Destiny and juxtaposes the marketing of Mars colonization with environmental activist "No Planet B" media messaging, examining the implications of both for imagined planetary and extra-planetary futures.