EJ and The City: Perspectives on Environmental Justice and Inequality

This seminar will discuss topics in the study of environmental justice and inequality, integrating research from sociology, geography, political ecology, and interdisciplinary environmental studies. The course moves through three thematic blocks. The first presents a broad survey of environmental justice movements and environmental inequality scholarship in US cities, focusing on hazards, risks, and exposure. The second introduces literature on critical environmental justice and the link between environmental inequality and the racialization of urban space. The third block circulates outward from urban spaces to consider the social-environmental embeddedness of the city at multiple scales, and the position of the city within broader patterns of human-geographic and landscape transformation. The course concludes with a discussion of green redevelopment, social movement organizing, and issues related to knowledge production and methodology.