University of Kent

Profile

I hold a B.A. (University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978, in Psychology, with highest honours), M.Sc. (L.S.E., 1980, in Logic and Scientific Method), and Ph.D. (University College London, 1987, in the History and Philosophy of Science).

Since September 2006 I have been a Lecturer (0.5) in Religious Studies at the University of Kent (Canterbury), where I teach in the MA programme on the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. From 2002-06 I was a Lecturer (0.5) at the Sophia Centre, Bath Spa University College, where I co-taught the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astronomy.

I have reviewed books for History Today, New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent and (most often) the Times Literary Supplement; appeared on two television programmes; and taken part in two programmes on BBC Radio Four. I also appear in interviews of two of the three extended New Line DVD’s on The Lord of the Rings.

My ongoing project (when I get time) concerns enchantment as a common but little-mentioned human experience – one which touches on and connects a wide range of strange bedfellows: nature, erotic communion, art, divination and spirituality. It is influenced by the work of Max Weber and succeeding critical theorists, as well as other writers such as as J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, David Abram, Sean Kane, Val Plumwood, Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. I am also very interested in related issues such as the nature of truth, metaphor, embodied phenomenology, pluralism and post-secularism.

All my publications are listed, and in some cases available to download or order, at www.patrickcurry.co.uk

Research

Books

Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006).

Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon, Co-author with Roy Willis (Oxford: Berg, 2004).

Machiavelli for Beginners, republished as Introducing Machiavelli (Cambridge: Icon, 1995).

Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth & Modernity, New York: St Martin’s Press, Edinburgh: Floris, 1997 and London: HarperCollins, 1998; re-issued with a new Afterword ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).

Sky and Psyche: The Relationship between Cosmos and Consciousness, Co-editor with Nicholas Campion (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2006).

Astrology, Science and Society, Editor, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1987).

Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England, (Oxford: Polity Press and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

Astrology and the Academy, editor with Nicholas Campion and Michael York (Bristol: Cinnabar Books, 2004).

Articles and Papers

Divination and Astrology

“Research on the Mars Effect”, Zetetic Scholar 9 (1982) 34-53, 78-83.

“Energy, Signs, and the Stars”, Semiotica 49 (1984) 169-74.

“Revisions of Science and Magic”, History of Science 23 (1985) 299-325.

“Afterword” and “Bibliographical Appendix” in William Lilly's Christian Astrology (London: Regulus, 1985; a reprint of the 1647 edn.).

“The Astrologers' Feasts”, History Today 38 (April 1988) 17-22. Historical consultant to Cosmic Connections (Time-Life Books, 1988).

“John Worsdale and Late 18C. English Astrology” and “Astrological Literature in Late 18C. England”, in Annabella Kitson (ed.), History and Astrology: Clio and Urania Confer (London: Unwin, 1989) 237-42.

“Astrology in Early Modern England: The Making of a Vulgar Knowledge”, in P. Rossi, S. Pumphrey and M. Slawinski (eds.), Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990) 274-91.

“Foreword”, Geoffrey Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology: Origins in Divination (London: Penguin, 1994; rev. edn Bournemouth: Wessex Astrologer, 2004).

“Astrology: Pagan or Postmodern?”, The Astrological Journal 36:1 (1994) 69-75.

“The Messages of the Stars”, The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4818 (4 August 1995) 11 [essay-review].

“Astrology”, in Kelly Boyd (ed.), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999) 55-57.

“Astrology on Trial, and its Historians: Reflections on the Historiography of ‘Superstition’, Culture and Cosmos 4:2 (2000) 47-56.

“Astrology”, in J.L. Heilbron (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Twenty-two entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).

“The Historiography of Astrology: A Diagnosis and a Prescription”, in K.von Stuckrad, G. Oestmann and D. Rutkin (eds.), Horoscopes and History (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005) 261-74

Review of Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London. Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), in Aries 7 (2007) 111-125.

“Grounding the Stars”, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 1:2 (2007) 210-219

“Truth, the Body and Divinatory Astrology”, forthcoming in History and Philosophy of Science (2008).

“Divination, Enchantment and Platonism”, in Jean H. Lall and Angela Voss (eds.), The Imaginal Cosmos (Canterbury: University of Kent, 2006) 35-46.

Ecology

Review of M.E. Tucker & J. Berthrong (eds.), Confucianism and Ecology, in the Journal of Contemporary Religion 15:1 (January 2000) 146-48.

Review of J. Barry, Rethinking Green Politics, in Environmental Values 9:1 (February 2000) 120-22.

“Redefining Community: Towards an Ecological Republicanism”, Biodiversity and Conservation 9:8 (2000) 1059-1071

“Re-Thinking Nature: Towards an Eco-Pluralism”, Environmental Values 12:3 (2003) 337-360.

“Green Ethics and the Democratic Left”, Soundings 35 (2007) 66-75.

“Nature Post-Nature”, forthcoming in New Formations (2008).

“Post-Secular Nature: Principles and Politics”, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion (2008).

Tolkien

“Magic vs. Enchantment”, Journal of Contemporary Religion 14:3 (October 1999) 401-412.

“Tolkien and his Critics: A Critique”, in Thomas Honegger (ed.), Root and Branch: Approaches Towards Understanding Tolkien (Zurich/Berne: Walking Tree, 1999) 81-150.

“Modernity in Middle-earth”, in Joseph Pearce (ed.), Tolkien: A Celebration (London:HarperCollins, 1999) 34-39.

“Defending Middle-Earth”, Laurence Coupe (ed.), The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2000), 282-287.

“Middle-earth”, in Bron Taylor and Jeffrey Kaplan (eds.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum International, 2004).

Seven entries in Michael C. Drout (ed.), The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

Review of Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans, Ents, Elves and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006) in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007) 238-44.

Review of Robert Eaglestone (ed.), Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien’s Classic (London: Continuum, 2005) ) in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007) 297-302.

“Iron Crown, Iron Cage: Tolkien and Weber on Modernity and Enchantment”, in Eduardo Segura (ed.), Myth, Art and Magic: the Outlook of the Inklings (Zurich: Walking Tree Books, 2008).

“Enchantment in Tolkien and Middle-earth”, forthcoming in 2008.

Miscellaneous

“Towards a Post-Marxist Social History: Thompson, Clark and Beyond”, Adrian Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) 158-200.

“Machiavelli’s Ethics, Then and Now”, in P. Harris, A. Lock and P. Rees (eds.), Proceedings of Machiavelli at 500 (Manchester Metropolitan University, 1998) 45-56.

Review of Graham Harvey, Animism (London: C. Hurst & co., & New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), Journal of Contemporary Religion 22:2 (2007) 286-88.

“Research Note: Neo-Shamanism”, Journal of Contemporary Religion 21:1 (2006) 99-101.

Teaching