Rebecca Kneale Gould is Associate Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies.  Among the courses she teaches are: "Nature's Meanings," "Religion and Environmental Ethics," "Simplicity in American Culture," "Thoreau, Religion and Social Change" and "Contemplative Practice and Social Change."  Gould's first book, At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America, was published by The University of California Press (2005) and is an ethnographic and historical study of back-to-the-land experiments based on research she conducted while living and working at the homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing.  

Gould's more recent publications (in Jon Isham's, Ignition, Whitney Bauman's Grounding Religion, Cecile Andrew's Less is More and Mildred's Lane's Renovating Walden) reflect two of her current research and writing projects: religiously-based environmental action and the impact "time-famine" on physical, spiritual and ecological well-being.  Through grants from the Fetzer Institute and Kalamazoo college, Gould has joined with 24 colleagues to further the work set out in Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc's Uncovering the Heart of Higher Education, an initiative that seeks to invigorate "whole person" pedagogy with attention to the role of contemplative practice in Higher Education and the psychological and spiritual well-being of students, staff and faculty in Higher Ed settings.

Rebecca Gould is the co-producer and chief content advisor for the documentary film, The Fire Inside: Place, Passion and the Primacy of Nature, which premiered at the Yale Divinity School in June of 2012 and continues to be screened at conferences and in small theaters on both the East and West Coasts.

Gould has received grants from the Lily Endowment, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Louisville Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Young Scholars Program of the Center for American Religion at IU-IUPUI and the Fetzer Institute. She is a Board Member of the international non-profit Take Back Your Time and consults for the Gross National Happiness movement.