This page gathers my books, comprehensive examination research, conference presentations, and longer academic papers. My work sits at the intersections of phenomenology, ecological theology, and creaturely life. I am especially interested in how another living being becomes perceptible as a life with its own form, directedness, and world, and in what must change within a perceiver who would receive that life without reducing it to availability.
The central project holding this work together is The Ecology of the Cross. Through what I call ecological intentionality, I bring Edith Stein, Aristotle, Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Ruyer, and the Christian theology of the cross into conversation with particular creatures and places, especially the watersheds, forests, and communities of the Carolinas.
These papers trace a developing argument. They preserve the questions, experiments, revisions, and encounters through which the larger project has taken shape.
Curriculum Vitae | Academia.edu | Google Scholar
Current and Selected Research
Ecological Intentionality, Creaturely Form, and The Ecology of the Cross: A Cruciform Phenomenology of Creaturely Relation
Comprehensive examination paper, California Institute of Integral Studies, August 2026.
This paper offers my most sustained account of ecological intentionality as an organism-milieu-perceiver relation grounded in creaturely form-in-act. Its final movement draws upon Edith Stein and John of the Cross to ask what transformation of desire is required when attentive perception continues to turn creaturely life into possession.
Displaced Forms: Assyrian Reliefs, Ecological Intentionality, and the Ethics of Perception
Research paper, May 2026.
Returning to the Assyrian reliefs I studied at Yale, this paper examines displacement, museum perception, and the ethical conditions under which ancient objects and their worlds become available to modern viewers.
A Life in Act: Edith Stein and the Education of Attention
Research essay, July 2026.
This essay follows Edith Stein’s philosophical, religious, and intellectual development, tracing how her work on empathy, finite being, and the cross has shaped my understanding of attention as a philosophical and ecological discipline.
Books and Published Work
Harrelson, Sam. Asia Has Claims Upon New England: Assyrian Reliefs at Yale. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2006. ISBN 0-89467-965-1.
An illustrated study of the nineteenth-century arrival of Assyrian palace reliefs at Yale, their religious iconography, and the American missionary and collecting histories through which they were displaced.
Yale University Art Gallery | Smithsonian Libraries | Download PDF
Conference Papers and Presentations
2026
- Edith Stein, Empathy, and Ecological Intentionality. Paper presented at Yale University’s Graduate Conference on Religion and Ecology, February 2026.
- History as Empathic Ecology: Edith Stein and the Practice of Ecological Empathy. Paper presented at Christendom College’s Eternity in Time: Thinking with the Church through History, February 2026.
2025
- Boundaries: Ecological Theology, Migration, and the Sacredness of the Non-Human. Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, June 2025.
- Relational Roots and Ecological Futures: Bridging Whitehead, Cobb, and Gullah Wisdom Toward a Decolonized Ecological Civilization. Paper presented at the Center for Process Studies conference Is It Too Late?: Toward an Ecological Civilization, Pomona College, June 2025.
- Ecological Intentionality: Performing Peace Beyond Human Boundaries. Conference paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Western Region, Arizona State University, March 2025.
Working Papers and Academic Essays
2026
- Ecological Intentionality and the Metaphysics of Living Form. Research paper, May 2026.
- Attention as Ecological Practice: AI Data Centers and the Limits of the Anthropocene. Research paper, April 2026.
- Learning to Be Addressed by Trees: Vegetal Empathy, Ecological Intentionality, and the Limits of the Human. Research paper, January 2026.
- After the Crossroads: Artificial Intelligence, Place-Based Ethics, and the Slow Work of Moral Discernment. Research paper, January 2026.
- Ecological Intentionality and the Depth of Being. Research paper, January 2026.
2025
- Quantum–Plasma Consciousness and the Ecology of the Cross. Research paper, December 2025.
- Artificial Intelligence at the Crossroads of Science, Ethics, and Spirituality. Research paper, November 2025.
- Integral Plasma Ecology: Toward a Cosmological Theology of Energy and Relation. Research paper, October 2025.
- Convergent Intelligence: Merging Artificial Intelligence with Integral Ecology and “Whitehead Schedulers”. Research paper, August 2025.
- Integral Plasma Dynamics: Consciousness, Cosmology, and Terrestrial Intelligence. Research paper, July 2025.
- Conservation as Communion. Research paper, May 2025.
- Process Ecology of the Cross: Communion, Kenosis, and the Politics of Planetary Becoming. Research paper, May 2025.
- From Communion to Kenosis: Toward an Integral Ecology of the Cross. Research paper, May 2025.
- Wording the Between: Toward an Ecological Metaphysics of Communion through Liturgy and Language. Research paper, May 2025.
2024
- Relational Roots and Ecological Futures. Academic paper, December 2024. PDF.
- Empathy, Embodiment, and Ecology: A Phenomenological Path to Decolonial Embodiment and Reconciliation. Academic paper, 2024. PDF.
- Decolonial Methods and Epistemologies in the Study of Gullah Geechee Ecological and Spiritual Practices. Academic paper, 2024. PDF.
- Reconstructing Relationships: Decolonial Methods and Epistemologies in the Study of Gullah Geechee Ecological and Spiritual Practices. Academic paper, 2024. PDF.