Professor Diana Pei WuOffice: Johnson Chapel 17

Copeland Fellow, Amherst CollegeOffice Phone: 413-542-5428

Class meets: TuTh 11:30 am – 12:50 pmEmail:

Office Hours: Tu 2-3pm and by appointment (Knock on the door)

ENST 53: Race, Class and Gender in Environmental Movements

Introduction to the Class

[In-class lecture, Tu Jan 25, 2010]

Key Texts

Book order placed 1/26/10 at Food for Thought Books,106 North Pleasant Street; Amherst, MA 01002 (10:00am to 6:00pm daily). Books should arrive by the end of next week (Feb 5). For more information, see

  • Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith
  • Cole and Foster, From the Ground Up
  • All My Relations, Winona LaDuke
  • Race, Poverty and Environment issue on climate justice (Fall 2009)
  • Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring (Island Press)
  • Robert Hayashi, Haunted By Waters

Readings should also be available, in general, on e-reserves and in the library. I will give weekly assignment sheets for the following week, with links to papers and chapters as possible. As you can see, there are several places in the syllabus where I will be emailing out pdfs of chapters or papers putting them on e-reserves, and/or giving you the full citation later on in the course. Because some of the latter parts of the course will be changing through the coming months, there may be some changes to the course syllabus as we go.

Books on reserve at the Amherst College library:

  • Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith
  • Cole and Foster, From the Ground Up
  • All My Relations, Winona LaDuke
  • Race, Poverty and Environment issue on climate justice (Fall 2009)
  • Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring (Island Press)
  • Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought
  • Decolonizing Nature, Adams and Mulligan
  • Hayashi, Haunted By Waters
  • Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases

Course Goals

  • Students will think of environmental issues and debates in a broad way, to include: toxics, and, air, water, food sovereignty, sovereignty and self-determination, biological and cultural diversity, human relationships with nature
  • Students will be able to define the following theoretical analytical frames and approaches:
  • Racial formations / social formations / environmental in/justice formations (reference Gramsci, Hall, Omi & Winant, Pellow and Park, Pulido)
  • Decoloniality
  • Intersectionality
  • Students will have some issue specific knowledge on a variety of environmental issues from both scientific and social-political approaches, and some idea of solutions proposed by social movements to these problems.

Course assignments

  • Do the readings, Come to class, be on time, be prepared, Participate, be creative
  • One in-class mid-term, one short paper (related to your Google Assignment), one in-class presentation, one final exam / paper (TBD).

In-class quiz: Will happen some time in February.

In-class mid-term. Tuesday, March 2.

Short paper: Confirm the paper topic with me before you write it. 8-10 pages double-spaced. Due Thursday, March 11, 2010, at the beginning of class.

Google-Earth assignment - Students will generate textual information to be uploaded on Google Earth. These creative projects will discuss gender and environment in concrete places, making concise research findings available on the web. Projects will be presented in class Apr 1.

In class Presentation: You will be asked to present on the papers for a specific week and lead an in-class activity or discussion based on the papers.

Grading

  • Attendance & Participation; Homework; one in-class quiz – 20%
  • Short Paper & Google Earth – 20%
  • Class Presentation – 15%
  • Mid-term- 20%
  • Final – 25%

Citation: Please follow standard journal citation procedures. If you are unclear as to what that is, you may follow the citation procedures for any of the following journals (e.g. Go to these journals, look them up. Their citation procedures are usually located in the section they will have for authors wishing to submit papers for publication.)

  • Social Justice (Humanities)
  • Environmental Justice
  • Ethnicities (Social Science)

The standard Amherst College policies on plagiarism and citation apply.

I.Theories of Oppression and Liberation

Week 1: An Introduction to US Environmentalism

  • Reading: Dorceta Taylor, Race, Class and Gender in American Environmentalism (2002)
  • WEB DuBois, The Souls of White Folk

Weeks 2 & 3: Theories of De/Colonization, Racism, Sexism and Class

Week 2:

Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010

  • Gottlieb: Introductions (there are two), Chapter 1 – 50 pp (this book may not yet be available in the bookstore; I will scan the chapters on Friday and email everyone).
  • Turner and Wu, 2002. Environmental Justice and Environmental Racism. (Available online) – 30 pp
  • Stuart Hall (Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race & Ethnicity) – (skim)

Thursday, Feb 4, 2010

  • Mignolo, “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality, and the Grammar of Decoloniality” – (~75 pp, 1.5 spaced)

Week 3:

Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010

  • Omi & Winant, Racial Formations – part 1 – 50 pp
  • Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations – entire book

Thursday, Feb 11, 2010

  • Gottlieb, Chapter 2 – ~30 pp
  • Cheah, The Limits of Thinking in Decolonial Strategies.
  • Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, Conclusion – 6 pp. (will scan)

Additional resources: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (especially chapters 1,2,10,11,12)

I.Toxics

Week 4: Military, War Poisons to Pesticides and Fertilizers

Tuesday, Feb 16, 2010

  • Gottlieb Chapter 3
  • Omi & Winant, Section 2
  • DraftEnvironmental Impact Statement / Overseas Environmental Impact Statement. GUAM AND CNMI MILITARY RELOCATION: Relocating Marines from Okinawa, Visiting Aircraft Carrier Berthing, and Army Air and Missile Defense Task Force. Executive Summary. November 2009.
  • Deborah Berman Santana. 2002. Resisting Toxic Militarism: Vieques versus the U.S. Navy. Social Justice, 29 (1-2): 37-47. (Available via pdf from Amherst Library website)

Thursday, Feb 18, 2010

  • Gwyn Kirk; Margo Okazawa-Rey. 2004. Women opposing U.S. militarism in East Asia. Peace Review 16(1): 59-64. (Available via pdf from Amherst Library website)
  • Enloe, Cynthia. 2000. Bananas, Beaches and Bases. Ch.4 “Base Women.” Pp 42 – 64. University of California Press. Available on Google Books:

Week 5:

Tuesday, Feb 23, 2010: Housing segregation, Transportation Justice, toxics in communities of color & white privilege.

  • Pulido, 2000. White privilege and Southern California. Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
  • Environmental Defense Fund. 2007. Report: All Choked Up: Heavy Traffic, Dirty Air and the Risk to New Yorkers. Full report:
  • Bellingham et al. 2009. Exposure to a Complex Cocktail of Environmental Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds Disturbs the Kisspeptin/GPR54 System in Ovine Hypothalamus and Pituitary Gland. Environmental Health Perspectives 117(10).
  • Graff et al. 2009. Exposure to Concentrated Coarse Air Pollution Particles Causes Mild Cardiopulmonary Effects in Healthy Young Adults. Environmental Health Perspectives 117(7):

Thursday, Feb 25, 2009: Toxics and consumer production cycle

  • Note on Life Cycle Analysis: Prepared by Susan Svoboda, manager of the University of Michigan CorporateEnvironmental Management Program (CEMP).NATIONAL POLLUTION PREVENTION CENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.
  • Pellow and Park 2004. Racial formation, environmental racism, and the emergence of Silicon ValleyEthnicities
  • SVTC: Electronics Lifecycle Analysis.
  • Protecting the Health of Nail Salon Workers.
  • National Healthy Nail Salon Alliance. Issue Brief
  • National Healthy Nail Salon Alliance. Report on Toxic Trio. Download from:
  • Peña and Pulido. 1998. Environmentalism and Positionality: The Early Pesticide Campaign of the United Farm Workers' Organizing Committee, 1965-1971.Race, Gender & Class. 6 (1): 33-50.

Week 6

Tuesday, March 2 – IN-CLASS MID-TERM

II.Land and Property

Thursday, March 4: Land, Food, Sovereignty and LIberated Zones

  • Max Rameau, Take Back The Land. (pdf)
  • MOVIE: The Farm
  • Additional Resource: A novel – la cintura del Diablo

Week 7

Tuesday March 9: Prisons, Mining and Green Revoluton Agriculture as Ecologically Destructive Land Uses

  • Gilmore, you have dislodged a boulder. (pdf)
  • VIDEO: APPALSHOP // something on appalachian coal mining
  • Tar sands, Black Mesa
  • Feed the World:

Thursday March 11

  • Non timber forest products; Brinda’s work on changes in labor
  • SHORT PAPERS DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS

WEEK 8 :: SPRING BREAK – Read: Cole and Foster, From the Ground Up

III.Air

Week 9: This week we address legal aspects of environmental impact reports and struggles

Tuesday Mar 23

  • Cole – environmental lawyering papers
  • Cole and Foster – From the Ground Up

Thursday, Mar 25

  • Cole / Will – the Chevron and Climate Change EIR
  • Case study: Chevron
  • Case study: the Niger delta

IV.Water

Week 10:

Tuesday Mar 30

  • Discussion: Fisheries – Hayashi’s book
  • Read: Water rights, acequias
  • THE BOLIVIAN WATER WARS

Thursday, Apr 1 – Presentation of Google Earth Projects

SHORT PAPER DUE

V.Movements

Week 11:

Tuesday April 6: Water (from last week); Movements: the 60s and 70s

  • Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow Left. (selections)
  • Pellow: Garbage Wars (paper)
  • The paper on the young lords (paper)
  • Gottlieb Chapter 4

Thursday April 8: Movements: The 80s and 90s

  • Gottlieb, Chapter 5,6

Week 12:

Tuesday April 13: Movements: Contemporary Currents in the US / Environmental Movements

  • Gottlieb, Chapter 7,8
  • The Death of Environmentalism
  • The Soul of Environmentalism
  • ReGeneration: Youth Organizing Shaping Environmental Justice (Quiroz-Martinez, Wu and Zimmerman 2005) – especially Youth Principles of EJ; Youth Principles of Good Leadership

Thursday April 15

  • Fertile Ground
  • ACRJ / EMERJ
  • ReGeneration 2010 report.
  • Bali Principles of Climate Justice
  • EJCC Principles of Climate Justice
  • EJLFCC Principles of Climate Justice

WEEK OF APRIL 20 & 22, 2010 – EARTH WEEK

 Professor Wu will be in Bolivia at the World Conference of Social Movements on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

Read: Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith. I will try to arrange at least one class lecture via Skype or some other conference call.

Weeks 14 & 15

Tuesday, April 27: Decolonizing the Academy

  • Discussion: Decolonizing Methodologies

Thursday, April 29: Climate Change Science

  • Copenhagen Diagnosis. (or whatever the latest report on climate change science is)
  • Guest Speaker? Bethany Bradley

Tuesday, May 4: Reportbacks from:

  • UPROSE Youth Climate Justice Summit, NYC, April 16-17
  • World Conference of Social Movements on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, April 19 – 22
  • Towards USSF, June 22-26, 2010. Detroit, MI.

Thursday, May 6: Climate Change Politics and International Negotiations

  • REDD Paper (IEN)
  • Paper on Women and Climate Change
  • Paper on Refugees/Migration and Climate Change
  • Towards COP 16, Cancún, México, November-December 2010
  • Discussion with Gerardo Gambirazzio, Dartmouth College

FINAL EXAM / PAPER.

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