Featured on January 20, 2007

Kathleen Dean Moore is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, and the founding director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. Her current work is in the areas of environmental ethics and philosophy and nature, where she has published three award-winning books of essays: The Pine Island Paradox (Milkweed Editions, 2004); Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World (Lyons Press, 1999, 2004); and Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water (Harcourt Brace, 1996). She is co-editor of a forthcoming collection of articles about Rachel Carson's legacy and challenge and the co-editor of How It Is: A Native American Philosophy, the collected papers of the late Viola Cordova.

By combining personal narrative with natural history and philosophical inquiry, Moore brings environmental philosophy to a general audience in journals that range from Orion, Discover, Field and Stream, Audubon, and Wild Earth to the North American Review, the New York Times Magazine, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.

At Oregon State, Moore teaches the Philosophy of Nature, a field course that meets beside a Cascades Mountain lake; Environmental Ethics, a community-based projects course; and Critical Thinking. She coordinates a university/community lecture course on Native American Philosophies. Off-campus, in a variety of landscapes from interior Alaska to the Apostle Islands, Moore teaches the art of the nature essay.

Moore's Ph.D., from the University of Colorado, is in the philosophy of law, where her particular interest is in the nature of forgiveness and reconciliation. Her book, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest (Oxford UP, 1989, 1997) outlines a justice-based argument for pardons.

Long interested in innovative teaching, Moore is a "Master Teacher" and the recipient of the highest teaching honor bestowed by alumni, the "OSU Alumni Distinguished Professor Award." She is the author of two textbooks that connect the skills of critical thinking and effective writing, Reasoning and Writing and Patterns of Inductive Reasoning: Developing Critical Thinking Skills.

Kathleen and her husband Frank, an OSU biologist, have two grown children, Erin, an architectural designer, and Jonathan, an aquatic ecologist. They are all wild for anything wet--big rivers, small boats, desert canyons, and the edges of the sea.

For more information http://oregonstate.edu/cla/philosophy/faculty/kathy