Faculty Scholarship and Creative Contributions
Environmental Humanities Affiliated Faculty are warmly invited to list here their recent related scholarly and creative contributions (within the last five to six years). This could include significant publications, keynote talks, exhibitions, and grant projects.
Dr. Joshua King (English)
Book:
Creation’s Praise: Poetry, Liturgy, and Ecological Crisis in Modernity (forthcoming for the Cambridge Elements Literature and Religion since 1500 Series, Cambridge University Press).
Articles/Chapters in Collections:
“‘Dearest freshness deep down things’: Christ and Soil in Hopkins’s Verse,” special issue of Literature and Belief 43 (forthcoming 2026) (5,500 words).
“Social and Environmental Justice.” The Cambridge Companion to Religion in Victorian Literary Culture, ed. Mark Knight (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026) (6,000 words).
“Wordsworth’s Churchyards: Composting Localism in Compromised Sacred Commons.” Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: the 1810s, ed. Emma Mason, Cambridge series on Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition (Cambridge UP, 2026), pp. 66-91. (10,000 words).
“Literary Counter-Liturgies and Environmental Justice.” Handbook of Religion and the Environment, eds. Ibrahim Ozdemir, Stephanie Boddie, and Susan Bratton (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2026), pp. 124-140 (9,000 words).
Chapter on “Ecology.” Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context, ed. Marton Dubois, Cambridge series on Literature in Context (Cambridge University Press 2025), pp. 149-156 (3,000 words).
With Chris Adamson, Emily Allen, Dino Franco Felluga, and Monica Wolfe. “Event 2024: Embodied and Virtual Events across Nations and Time,” Victorian Review 50.1 (pub. 2025 [issue for Spring 2024]), contribution to special “Forum: Thinking Relationally: Victorian Studies and the Climate Crisis” guested edited by Barbara Leckie, pp. 31-35.
“The Democratisation of the Bible: Education, Economics, Ecology,” The Nineteenth Century, ed. Elisabeth Jay in The Bible and Western Christian Literature: Books and the Book, 5 vols., ed. Elisabeth Jay and Stephen Pricket et al. (T&T Clark Bloomsbury Publishing 2024), pp. 353-396 (25,000 words: 10,000-word essay followed by 15,000 words of illustrative material and commentary)
“Revelatory Beasts: Christina Rossetti on the Apocalypse and Creation’s Worship,” Christianity and Literature 70.4 (2021), pp. 382-403 (10,970 words). Awarded the 2021 Lionel Basney Award for outstanding article of the year.
“Child Labour and the Idolatry of Nature in ‘The Cry of the Children’ and A Drama of Exile,” Women’s Writing 27.4 (2020), special issue on “Women and Labour in the Nineteenth Century,” edited by Lisa Surridge and Mary Elizabeth Leighton, pp. 404-415 (5,200 words).
Selected Keynote Talks and Invited Lectures
Invited Keynote and Lectureship: “Other Creatures Praise: Poetry, Liturgy, and Ecological Crisis in Modernity.” Annual Lectureship on Religion and Literature, University of Notre Dame, April 2026
Seminar for Invited Lectureship: “Cultivating Refugia: Literature Classes and Local Healing.”
Annual Lectureship on Religion and Literature, University of Notre Dame, April 2026
Invited Lecture: “Deep Down Things”: Soil and Christ’s Body in Hopkins’s Poetry,” The Gerard Manley Hopkins Annual International Festival, Newbridge, Ireland (July 21, 2025).
Invited Lecture: “‘Dearest freshness deep down things’: Christ and Soil in Hopkins’s Verse,” Summit on Literature and Religion, Bringham Young University (June 14, 2025).
Invited Lecture: With Stephanie Boddie, "Sacred Convictions, Sustainable Cities: Solutions from Waco's SCRAP Collective and Baylor University," United Nations World Urban Form 12 (Convened by UN- Habitat), Cairo, Egypt. (November 6, 2024).
Invited Keynote: “Soil and Soul: Nourishing Lands and Lives in the Humanities," Craft, Critique, Culture Conference: Emerald-Colored Glasses, An Environmental Vision, University of Iowa English Department, University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA). (April 21, 2023).
Invited Lecture: “‘I all-creation sing’: Christina Rossetti’s Cosmic Liturgy and Challenge to Anthropocentrism,” authors’ symposium in Yosemite National Park for contributors to Virtue, Vice, and Ecoflourishing: Multidisciplinary Christian Perspectives (Oct. 22, 2021).
Invited Lecture: “Christina Rossetti’s Ecotheology and Ecopoetics,” Lancaster University Literature and Religion Reading Group, Lancaster University, UK, invited to lead seminar for faculty and graduate students at Lancaster and leading universities in UK (on Zoom: June 10, 2021).
Invited Keynote: “Lords of the Earth? Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Christ’s Body in the Age of Human Domination,” keynote lecture for Browning Day, Armstrong Browning Library (on Zoom: April 16, 2021). 160 people attended from across the world.
Invited Lecture: "'I all-creation sing': Christina Rossetti on Cosmic Liturgy," invited lecture for Nineteenth-Century Postgraduate Research Seminar, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge (on Zoom: March 9, 2021).
Invited Lecture: "Christina Rossetti's Green Sanctuaries and Cosmic Liturgies." Nineteenth-Century Research Seminar, Baylor, (broadcast on Zoom to several audiences, Oct. 23, 2020).
Selected Grants
Environmental Protection Agency Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grant Program (CCGP), $17.9 million total in partnership with Waco, TX nonprofits, led by Mission Waco, and City of Waco; $938,141 for Baylor projects (awarded for 2025-2027; terminated by administration April 2025): PI (Stephanie Boddie, Baylor), Co-PI (Joshua King, Baylor), Co-PI (Kevin Magill, Baylor).
Matching Grant from the Funders Network’s Partners for Places Program and the Cooper Foundation, $300,000 total in partnership with Waco, TX nonprofits, led by Mission Waco, and City of Waco; $44,420 for Baylor projects (2023-2024): PI (Stephanie Boddie, Baylor), Co-PI (Joshua King, Baylor).
Student Government Allocation Fund: Structural and Aesthetic Improvements at Baylor Community Garden, $24,600; Contribution to Garden-To-Table Celebration Dinner, $2,840, application by Joshua King (2024).
Teaching Exploration Grant from Baylor University Academy for Teaching and Learning, $9,902 to Joshua King (2022): Planning grant to create new Environmental Humanities Minor.