Throughout her life as a writer, speaker, and activist, she has been intrigued with dynamic interrelatedness, which plays a central role in each subject to which she has been drawn. She is particularly interested in 21st-century discoveries indicating that the physical world, including the human
bodymind, is far more dynamically interrelated with nature and other people than
modernity had assumed. Several of her books also proposed a "map of the terrain" of emergent social-change movements and an exploration of the issues involved. She has helped to create an
eco-social frame of reference and vision in the areas of social criticism (including feminism and
ecofeminism[2][3][4]), cultural history, critique of technology,[5] and women's spirituality.
Since the mid-1980s, her books have examined the multiple crises of modernity and furthered the corrective efforts that are arising. Her book Green Politics (1984) was a major catalyst for the formation of the
U.S. Green Party movement, which she cofounded in the months following its publication.[6] Her essay A View from the Chute (2018) proposes a possible new approach in talking to
climate-change deniers about climate-change action.[7]
Awards and recognition
Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.
Selected works
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. Boston: Beacon Press (1978, 1981).
ISBN0-8070-1343-9
The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays by Founding Mothers of the Movement, Editor. New York: Anchor/Doubleday (1981).
ISBN0-385-17241-9
Green Politics: The Global Promise, with Fritjof Capra. New York: E. P. Dutton (1984).
ISBN0-525-24231-7
The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics. Santa Fe: Bear & Co (1986).
ISBN0-939680-29-7
States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco (1991).
ISBN0-06-250697-8
The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World. New York: Routledge (1997).
ISBN0-415-92298-4
Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her Re-Emergence in the Modern Church. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2004).
ISBN1-4039-7040-8
Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World. Topsham, ME: Green Horizon Books (2011).
ISBN0-615-46127-1
The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the Present (2014) Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN9781137350039
^Charlene Spretnak, "Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering", Reweaving the World, ed. by Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990
^Charlene Spretnak, "Critical and Constructive Contributions of Ecofeminism", Worldviews and Ecology, ed. by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1993
^Montardet, Pascale; Tragardh, Lars (June 3, 1993). "Tillbaka till kroppen: For ekofeministen Charlene Spretnak ar kvinnans fysik borjan till det goda". Dagens Nyheter. Stockholm, Sweden.
Interviewed in Our Lady, a film for Canadian television, Vision network (2012)
Moon, Michael Green Ideology and Its Relation to Modernity, Studies in Human Ecology (Lund, Sweden: Lund Studies in Human Ecology, 2008)
Interviewed for “Behind the Cult of Mary,” Women of the Bible, a Special Collector's Edition published by US News & World Report (January/February 2006)
“Jag ar beroende, alltsa finns jag,” a profile of Charlene Spretnak by Anita Goldman, Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 16 August 2002