RACE, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL

This course explores environmental justice (EJ) through an anti-colonial lens that centers the perspectives of dispossessed communities in different places around the world. A key question we will address alongside selected reading and discussion topics: how do we decolonize our research? We will address this question through in-depth workshops on the existing research projects of DEES PhD students and others who wish to volunteer their work for interrogation.

Readings and discussions will cover themes that include interdisciplinarity, the history of science(s) and knowledge production, decolonizing the geosciences, and relations based in mutuality (as opposed to extractivism). Students will be trained in community-based research methods in part by developing an anthropological lens beginning with a self-ethnography workshop that focuses on positionality and then, for those who have selected the 3-credit option, through their own mini-ethnography projects.

The seminar will also follow and contribute to the community-based projects that we have been working with in New Orleans for the past 3 semester. The Black School is our main partnering organization, which is embarking on a lead abatement project as well as collaborating with the Lincoln Beach Restoration project. Seed funds have been allocated for this work, and we will continue to learn about how to do meaningful community-based work through these examples while identifying ways students can contribute to their efforts.