Global Environmental Justice I

The University of Delaware's Center for Global & Area Studies will be holding its Fall 2020 "Issues in Global Studies" lecture series on Tuesdays from 12:30-1:20pm via Zoom.  This semester's series is entitled "Global Environmental Justice I."

Each lecture in the series which begins September 1 and continues through December 8 is free and open to the public.  The series is also a one-credit course (ARSC300) that is a core course for the Global Studies major and minor.

This semester's ARSC300 course will explore environmental justice around the world. This semester's moderator Brooke Stanley (English) details their course below:

As our planet grows warmer, sea levels rise, and our soils and bodies become toxic, we often speak of threats to humanity as a species. Environmental issues such as climate change are global in scope, and they do threaten all of us. Yet the impacts of environmental problems are uneven: different communities are exposed to different levels of risk. Low-income communities, people of color, indigenous groups, and citizens of the global South are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible corporations and unfair environmental policies. How might we narrate or address environmental problems with such injustices in mind?

Working across diverse geographies and disciplines, this lecture series and course will reach towards ideas for advancing environmental justice: equitable treatment of all communities with regard to environmental issues. Each week we will hear from a different guest speaker, including faculty experts from across and beyond the University of Delaware. Climate change, food, water, toxicity, and more will be addressed through guest lectures and film screenings.

All lectures are via Zoom and open to the public.  For those not in enrolled in the class who would like to attend the lectures, please RSVP to Brooke Stanley each week at bstanley@udel.edu.

The topics and speakers are as follows (additional topic descriptions will be added as the semester progresses):

• Sept. 1 - Introduction to Course - Brooke Stanley (they/them) - English 
• Note: This session is only open to students enrolled in the class.  Discussion will include foundational concepts such as environmental justice and the environmentalism of the poor.
• Sept. 8 - "Social (In)Justice in Relocation as Climate Adaptation" - A.R. Siders (she/her) - Disaster Research Center; Biden School; Geography
• Relocation is one of the most controversial climate cange adaptation strategies.  We'll discuss why it's controversial, why the U.S. National Climate Assessment calls is "unavoidable," how it is currently happening in the United States, and what tools and policies could improve the way we retreat in the future.
• Sept. 15 - Film Screening - "Anote's Ark" by Matthieu Rytz
• Sept. 22 - "Weathering the Superstorm in Monique Roffey's Archipelago" - Martin Premoli (he/him) - Cal State San Bernardino
• Over the past decade, hurricanes in the Atlantic have increased in size, frequency, and intensity. This talk discusses how narrative form can help us come to terms with (or "weather") the outsized scales of hurricane disaster.
• Sept. 29 - "Atmospheric Occasions: Spoken Word Poetry at U.N. Climate Summits" - Sarah Dimick (she/her) - Harvard University
• Reflecting on spoken word performances by Pasifika poets at United Nations Climate Change Conferences in 2014 and 2015, this talk considers the global rise of slam poetry over the last three decades in conjunction with the emergence of climate discourse. Particular attention is paid to the context of the conferences themselves, offering a reading of these performances as occasional poems.
• Oct. 6 - "Prophetic Science: The Government of Wind in the Bay of Bengal" - Debjani Bhattacharyya (she/her) - Drexel University
• Oct. 13 - "Cultivating Sovereignty: Seeds and Climate Change Adaptation in Highland, Chiapas" - Lindsay Naylor (she/her) - Geography and Spatial Sciences
• Focuses on the adaptation strategies and struggles of rebel indigenous subsistence farmers in Chiapas, Mexico.
• Oct. 20 - "Debunking the White Environmentalist Stereotype: Histories of Racialized Communities Who Organized for Justice" - Paul Jackson (he/him) - Geography and Spatial Sciences
• Oct. 27 - "From Traders to Slaves: The Image of the Native American Pearl Diver in Early Modern Europe" - Monica Dominguez Torres (she/her) - Art History
• This talk explores some of the strategies deployed by early modern artists and publishers to depict (or rather misrepresent) the indigenous communities of the Southern Caribbean, which were crucial for the emergence and development of the Atlantic pearl fisheries, the first profitable, though short-lived, European industry in the Americas. 
• Nov. 10 - "Toxic Sites and You: What's Around Where You Live?" - Dawn Fallik - English
• Nov. 17 - "After Displacement: Vernacular Modernity in the Quest for Viable Resttlement in Rural Western India" - Vikramaditya Thakur - Anthropology
• This talk looks at the post-displacement scenario of entire rural groups involving thousands of families displaced by development projects such as large dams in rural western India. We'll examine how peasant and lower caste groups mobilized for years using non-violent protest not to oppose the projects but to have a land-for-land resettlement law framed by the provincial government back in 1976 and have been successfully mobilizing to have it implemented in many irrigation projects since then. Dr. Thakur will argue that any planning for environmental conservation plan should pay attention to the voice at the margins rather than going for top-down approach rather than assuming that those at the margins are always victims or necessarily in opposition. 
• Dec. 1 - "Eugenics, Conservationism, and Overpopulation Concerns during the Early Cold War: A View from Brazil" - Eve Buckley (she/her) - History; Latin American and Iberian Studies
• In 1952 Brazilian physician Josué de Castro published a book called The Geography of Hunger which took issue with ideas about global overpopulation that were emanating from the United States. This talk examines the debate that ensued, particularly what this tells us about eugenics and conservationism during that period.
• Dec. 8 - Film Screening - "Black Gold" by Marc and Nick Francis