Merlin Student Scholar Fellow: Henry Kramer

Story, Phenomenology & Nature…

Henry Kramer was our 2019-2020 Student Scholar Fellow. His philosophy in the community projects focused on the human-nature relationship, environmental ethics, ecology, phenomenology, and imagination, myth, and story.  A lover of inquiry and wonder, clarity and understanding, and being immersed in the great outdoors, Henry’s philosophical interests lie in the phenomenology of nature (i.e., eco-phenomenology) and the phenomenology of imagination and story. Over the course of his young life, he has served as a panelist for the United Nations, a speaker on Tedx, and a guest lecturer at Hunter College, as well as a coordinator and facilitator for the Joseph Campbell Mythological Roundtable at the Center for Symbolic Studies in Rosendale, NY and a work-study assistant to cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram. Henry graduated from the University of Montana, Missoula in the Summer of 2020 with an MA in Environmental Philosophy and an MA in Literature.  He currently teaches philosophy at Hunter College in New York. 

Henry Kramer

(Merlin Student Scholar Fellow, 2019-2020)

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Henry Kramer is an environmental philosopher, writer, songweaver, and religious studies scholar with deep roots in the living land of the Hudson Valley. Henry teaches classes at CUNY Hunter including Ecospirituality, Mysticism, and Tribal Religions, has defended papers at conferences (arguing such crazy things as that nature has something to say to us), and has led workshops on cultivating wonder at Harvard Divinity School as well as through the public philosophy nonprofit Merlin CCC and locally near his home in Beacon. Henry runs Enchanted Ecology, a group that gathers every week to discuss how we might deepen our relationship with the more-than-human (as well as the Instagram @enchanted.ecology). He is passionate about cultivating a more spiritually sustainable way of being and living on Earth in a time when so much – ecologically, socioculturally, and psychologically – is approaching boil-over. This passion has led to a fortuitous crossing of paths with Amenia Regenerative Center in 2022. Synchronistically, Henry also facilitated the Joseph Campbell Mythological Roundtable for a short time in 2013 at the Center for Symbolic Studies at Stone Mountain Farm, where Amenia Regenerative has recently relocated.
About Enchanted Ecology

The Enchanted Ecology initiative was begun in 2023 by Henry Kramer to bring both philosophical rigor and deep embodiment to an enchanted, wondrous, and mythopoetic connection with ourselves and the more-than-human earth. Enchanted Ecology events are designed to help us shed our “Gorgon eyes” (that turn the world to stone) and recover a perceptual capacity for awe and an unselfconscious embrace of spontaneity and imagination – crucial at a time of spiritual and ecological alienation.

 

Learn more about the philosophical work Henry did in the community over the course of his fellowship with us below! (Coming soon…)