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George Handley

Professor | Comparative Literature
Department of Comparative Arts and Letters

JFSB 3027
BYU, Campus Dr
Provo, UT 84602

Biography

Biography:

My research and teaching focus on environmental humanities. My undergraduate and graduate training in comparative literature focused on the literatures of the Americas, with a special interest in comparing how the history of slavery was imagined in novels from the US and the Caribbean. I then ventured into the emerging field of ecocriticism and published work in postcolonial ecocriticism. After being hired at BYU in 1998 I also began writing about Mormonism and environmental values, leading to a sustained interest in theology in its relationship to environmental attitudes and to literature itself. I publish in literary criticism, public humanities, Mormon Studies, and as a creative writer.

I have previously served as Department Chair, Associate Dean of the College of Humanities, and Associate Director of the Faculty Center. I am the past co-president of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), founding president of Mormon Scholars in the Humanities, co-founder of LDS Earth Stewardship, and the designer of the College of Humanities Humanities and Belief Workshop for graduate students in the humanities. I currently serve as the coordinator for the Global Environmental Studies minor in the Kennedy Center and in the community as a member of the Provo City Council. I am planning a GE study abroad in Latin America for the winter of 2026.

My wife, Amy, is a nurse practitioner in oncology and together we have raised four children and now have four grandchildren. When I am not otherwise engaged, I enjoy family time, serving in the church, as well as flyfishing, hiking, and biking.

Degrees:

BA in comparative literature, Stanford University
MA and PhD in comparative literature, University of California, Berkeley

Books Authored:

Literature and Ecotheology: From Chaos to Cosmos (Routledge, 2024)
Lowell L. Bennion: A Mormon Educator (University of Illinois Press, 2023)
The Hope of Nature: Our Care for God's Creations (Maxwell Institute, 2020)
If Truth Were a Child (Maxwell Institute, 2019)
Climate Change Scepticism: A Transnational Ecocritical Analysis (Bloomsbury, 2019), co-authored with Greg Garrard, Axel Goodbody, and Stephanie Posthumus
American Fork (novel, John Hunt, 2018)
Learning to Like Life: A Tribute to Lowell Bennion (creative nonfiction, self-published, 2017)
Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River (memoir, University of Utah Press, 2010)
New World Poetics: Nature and the Adamic Imagination of Whitman, Neruda, and Walcott (University of Georgia Press, 2007)
Postslavery Literatures in the Americas: Family Portraits in Black and White (University of Virginia Press, 2001)

Books Edited:

Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. With Elizabeth DeLoughrey (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Stewardship and the Creation: LDS Perspectives on the Environment. With Terry Ball and Steven Peck (Religious Studies Center, 2006)
Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture. With Elizabeth DeLoughrey and Renée Gosson (University of Virginia Press, 2005)

Research Interests

Postcolonial Literature, Ecotheology, Ecocriticism

Teaching Interests

Environmental Humanities, Theory, Literature of the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America

Professional Citizenship

  • Board Member, Wayfare Magazine, Faith Matters (2022 - Present)
  • Board Member, The Nature Conservancy (2016 - Present)
  • Member, Provo City Council (2018 - 2025)
  • Other, Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (2021 - 2024)

Courses Taught