Walking with Holmes

Celebration

The Department of Philosophy and Colorado State University are pleased to announce that on the afternoon of September 19th, 2025, CSU will host an event in memory of University Distinguished Professor Holmes Rolston III. Professor Rolston was a founder of the field of environmental ethics, a deep thinker at the intersection of science and religion, and an accomplished naturalist. His work has influenced generations of thinkers and framed much of the contemporary discourse in environmental ethics. This event is open to the public and will provide an opportunity to celebrate the life and legacy of a figure who played such a pivotal role in environmental thought. 

Workshop

In conjunction with this public event, the Department of Philosophy and the College of Liberal Arts are planning an academic workshop discussing Rolston’s work and his impact on environmental thought. Held on Saturday and Sunday (9/20-9/21) at CSU’s Mountain Campus, the workshop will provide an opportunity to reflect on Rolston’s academic work in a setting he would have surely loved. The workshop will include short 20-minute presentations of work under development on, inspired by, or reacting to some feature of Rolston’s extensive corpus. We will walk in the mountains that Rolston found so inspiring, together, and develop our papers as we do. We expect to publish a volume collecting short essays (about 5000 words) developed from the workshop, with completed contributions due by the end of December 31st, 2025.

Submission guidelines

We are inviting a few additional contributors to participate in this workshop. While we are unable to cover travel expenses to and from Fort Collins, we will be able to cover expenses for the overnight stay at CSU’s Mountain Campus as well as transportation between the Campus from Fort Collins. If you would like to be included in this event, please submit an abstract of 200 words by July 1st, 2025 to [email protected]. Decisions will be made by July 15th.