George Handley (b. 1964) is an American scholar, essayist, and professor of humanities at Brigham Young University, where he has taught for over two decades. Born and raised in the United States, Handley earned his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and has built a distinguished career at the intersection of environmental humanities, comparative literature, and Latter-day Saint thought. He is the author of several books, including Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River (2010) and The Hope of Nature: Our Care for God’s Creation (2020), works that weave together ecological attentiveness, theological reflection, and personal memoir.
Handley’s scholarship is characterized by a sustained effort to hold together what contemporary culture often separates: scientific understanding of the natural world and the religious imagination that finds meaning within it. His work in comparative literature ranges across the Americas, with particular attention to Caribbean and Latin American traditions, and he has written extensively on the moral obligations that arise from genuine encounter with the living world. At BYU he has been a central voice in efforts to bring environmental stewardship into serious dialogue with Latter-day Saint theology.
Handley’s deepest contribution may be his insistence that creation is not a mere backdrop to human history but an active element of moral and spiritual life. His writing calls readers toward a more reverent, attentive, and responsible relationship with the earth—one grounded not in fear or nostalgia but in the conviction that caring for the world is itself a form of worship and a practice of discipleship. This posture of creative stewardship, where faith, science, and love of the natural world converge, resonates with the Mormon transhumanist vision of humanity as co-creator with God, called to participate wisely and compassionately in the ongoing work of a living cosmos.
