Charlene Spretnak’s work is internationally recognized in cultural history; spirituality and religion; social criticism (including feminism); and ecological thought and activism (including Green politics and ecological philosophy). She is the principal coauthor of Green Politics: The Global Promise (1984), which was a catalyst for the founding of the Green Politics organization in the United States, of which she is a cofounder. She is also a cofounder of two branches of the feminist movement: Women’s Spirituality and ecofeminism. Each of her books was a foray into a new or unexplored area to suggest a way of comprehending the overall coherence and significance of a new social movement, or an intellectual orientation, or an uncharted area of cultural history. She has brought a focus on dynamic interrelatedness to her engagement with the pre-Olympian mythology of Greece; the emergent Women’s Spirituality movement; the ecofeminist movement; the emergent Green Party movement in Europe and the United States; the spiritual dimension of Green politics; the rising tide of eco-social solutions to the crises of modernity; a progressive critique of the radical diminution of the Virgin Mary when the Catholic Church modernized at Vatican II; new discoveries of dynamic interrelatedness causing the Relational Shift in modern society; and the unacknowledged spiritual dimensions of modern and contemporary art.

          Her book The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World (1997) was chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of the Year. According to Publishers Weekly, “In her far-ranging, in-depth study of the structure of contemporary alienation, Spretnak joins the ranks of gifted writers qua intellectual social analysts like Lewis Mumford.” Her book Relational Reality (2011) was the first to “connect the dots” among numerous recent discoveries in human biology that are finally moving the relational worldview from the margins into the mainstream.

          In March 1989 Charlene Spretnak was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame by Gov. Richard F. Celeste in recognition of her writings on spirituality and social justice. She was Scholar-in-Residence at Schumacher College, in England, in 1992, 1997, and 2003. She is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion. She lives in Ojai, California. Website: www.charlenespretnak.com.