Michael Overstreet is a PhD Plus intern and Graduate Research Assistant with the Contemplative Sciences Center as well as a PhD candidate in the University of Virginia's (UVA) Department of French. He recently completed UVA’s Environmental Humanities certificate program pursuing his research on how agricultural practices help shape the ways we relate to the earth. He is keenly interested in how regenerative agriculture and the practice of compost, in particular, can help our cultures become more ecologically minded, both economically and politically speaking, and in the contemplative, philosophical, or spiritual sense, too.

Punctuating the school years he spent teaching English in France, acquiring his MA in French literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa, Michael spent his summers either working in fire management for the US Forest Service or on small organic farms. He dreams of one day incorporating hands-on agricultural work into his language and literature curricula.

Michael currently works part-time for Bellair Farm, is a passionate student at Hot Yoga Charlottesville, and enjoys living a modest life with his two feline fuzz loves. His recent publications include pieces on poetry in translation, human composting, and France’s farmer protests in the LA Review of Books, Interconnections: Journal of Posthumanism, and TIME Magazine, respectively.