WaterFire Symposium: Author Talk w. Julie Sze

Join us for our first virtual WaterFire Symposium, Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger with author Julie Sze.

About this Event

WaterFire Symposium: Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger w/author Julie Sze | Wednesday October 21, 7:00 p.m.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein

We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles?

Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Sze is Professor and the Founding Chair of American Studies at UC Davis. Sze’s first book, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice (MIT Press), won the 2008 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, awarded annually to the best published book in American Studies. Her second book was Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis (University of California Press, 2015). She is editor of Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power (NYU Press: 2018). Julie Sze has written or co-authored 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has given talks in Sweden, China, Abu Dhabi, Canada, Germany, France and Italy. Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger is part of the American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present series.

PRAISE

“Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger is a rousing primer that illuminates the movement’s core principles. It demonstrates how interconnected disparate social movements are and shows that they can coalesce into more powerful networks.”—Foreword Reviews

“Local, front-line struggles like the ones profiled here have long embodied—and continue to propel—our collective fight for a better society. If you want to understand how, let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein, author of On Fire and This Changes Everything

“In these perilous times, when the fate of the planet hangs in the balance, the question arises: what are we to do? This book is the answer. As veteran activist and scholar Julie Sze makes clear, the environmental justice movement knows what to do because it understands the climate catastrophe as the consequence of long-term policies of racism, dispossession, class exploitation, asset-stripping, organized abandonment, and privatization. With clarity and urgency, she tells the story of a movement whose visionary politics are not merely defensive but transformative.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“Once again, Julie Sze has written a book that will redefine the field and the way we see the world. She deftly draws on the tools of American Studies—literature, theory, art, and culture—to unpack and expose the driving forces behind our socioenvironmental crises. This is a hard-hitting and inspiring meditation on restorative environmental justice and radical hope in this moment when we need them most.”—David Naguib Pellow, Dehlsen Chair of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara and author of What Is Critical Environmental Justice?

ABOUT WATERFIRE SYMPOSIUM

WaterFire is pleased to partner with Symposium Books to host and co-curate this series of public dialogues that are presented for free and are open to all.

The WaterFire Symposium is a series of public lectures, readings and conversations about vital and timely issues from the arts to the sciences, from history to the climate crisis. WaterFire’s mission is to inspire our community. Bringing us all together in cordial discussion about the issues impacting our community helps us better understand the issues of the day.

**The views and opinions expressed by speakers/presenters at the WaterFire Arts Center are those of the speakers/authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of WaterFire Providence or any of our partners, sponsors, or supporters.**