Black Ecologies Week
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Black Ecologies Week
Monday, March 7–Friday, March 11, 2022
Presented by the UT Humanities Center
The UT Humanities Center is proud to organize “Black Ecologies Week” this spring, March 7-12, 2022, with University of Tennessee departments and community partners. This week-long series of events will feature vibrant cross-campus, community-oriented, and interdisciplinary conversations that investigate environmental issues in relation to Black life today. Incorporating literature, history, cultural studies, media, performance, and political analysis, the week’s events will offer important inroads to cross-cultural conversation, consideration of ecological issues in relation to social justice, and educational opportunities for students and life-long learners throughout the region.
The Humanities Center is excited to incorporate as many voices as possible in “Black Ecologies Week,” enriching important and exciting conversations at the intersection of environmentalism and social justice, particularly in relation to rivers and waterways. Currently partners include
- The UT Humanities Center
- UT Africana Studies
- Black in Appalachia
- Clarence Brown Theatre and UT Department of Theatre
- UT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- UT Department of English
- UT Department of Geography
- UT Libraries
- Department of Political Science
- UT Department of Sociology
- UT Women and Gender Studies IDP
- National partners: Furman University, University of California Irvine, University of Minnesota, University of Utah, and York University
The UT Humanities Center will host a symposium, “Just Environments: Rivers and Waterways,” on March 10, 2022 as part of Black Ecologies Week.
Schedule
Monday, February 21
2-3:30 p.m. via Zoom Registration
Dr. Julien Agyeman, “Just Sustainabilities in Policy, Planning and Practice”
Contact: Christina Ergas, Department of Sociology
March 4-13
7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; 2:00 p.m. matinees (Sundays only) LAB Theater, UT
Clarence Brown Theatre production of Blood at the Root by Dominique Morisseau, directed by Tracey Copeland Halter
Monday, March 7
4-5:30 p.m. via Zoom Registration
A Sharecropper’s Dream: A Look into the Legacy of Black Farmers
Voices Unheard VA—Family Ties
Dr. John Boyd Talks The History of Black Farmers
Contact: DeLisa Hawkes, Africana Studies or Shayla Nunnally, Africana Studies
Film screening on UTK campus: film River Lines and film shorts by Natalie Diaz and Saretta Morgan
Contact: Amy Elias, UT Humanities Center
Tuesday, March 8
11:00 am–12:30 pm via Zoom Registration
“Sustainable Urban Water and Energy Politics: A Conversation with UT Professors Nikki Luke and Jon Hathaway”
Contact: Dominique Joyner, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Tuesday, March 8
3:30 pm via Zoom Registration
Virtual Lunch and Lecture with Tiffany Lethabo King
Tiffany Lethabo King, University of Virginia and author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (Duke University Press, 2020)
Contact: Patrick Grzanka UTK Women and Gender Studies IDP or DeLisa Hawkes, Africana Studies
Wednesday, March 9
Live at UT Student Union, Room 169, Livestream to YouTube
Black in Appalachia: Day Event at UTK
Tabling: Sierra Club’s Holston River Banner
Exhibit & Tabling
10am–4pm: Hodges Library, 2nd Floor
Lectures/Podcasts
“Environmental Justice in Appalachia”
Pam Nixon (People Concerned About Chemical Safety) with Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin & Pumpkin Starr
11am – 12:30pm: Student Union Building, Room 169
“Race, Place, & Conversation (with Wild Birds)”
J. Drew Lanham (Clemson University) with Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin & Pumpkin Starr
2–3:30pm: Student Union Building, Room 169
Contact: William Isom, Director, Black in Appalachia or University of Tennessee Humanities Center
Wednesday, March 9
7-8:15 pm, Zoom Registration
Lecture
Dr. William Turner, “Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns”
Moderated by William Isom, Director, Black in Appalachia
Contact: Shayla Nunnally, Africana Studies
Thursday, March 10
9am–4pm via Zoom
Symposium Website
UT Humanities Center One-Day Symposium
“Just Environments: Rivers and Waterways”
9:00 am, Kevin Dawson, “Buried Beneath the Sea: Life and Death in the Slave Ship’s Wake”
Webinar link
11:00 am, J.T. Roane, “Black Ecologies, Subaquatic Life, and the Jim Crow Enclosure of the Tidewater”
Webinar Link
1:00 pm, Reading by Cornelius Eady, Poet
Webinar Link
3:00 pm, Natalie Diaz and Saretta Morgan , “Nyumuuhank: we see each other: holding across bodies of land and water”
Webinar Link
Contact: Amy Elias, UT Humanities Center Director or Jeffrey Amos, UT Humanities Center GRA
Thursday, March 10
4:45 pm
Colloquium Talk
Discussion with J.T. Roane and Geography Department (open to invited UT students and faculty)
Contact: Nikki Luke, Dept. of Geography, or
Derek Alderman, Dept. of Geography,
Friday, March 11
5:30-7:00 p.m.
Natalie Haslam Music Building; Orchestra Room
Limited Attendance, please RSVP
To purchase tickets for the performance of Blood at the Root, following the discussion please call the Box Office at 865-974-5161 and mention this event.
Reception and Discussion
Blood at the Root: The Legacy of Race, Violence, and the Jenna Six
Reception and panel discussion recounting the history of race and violence in Knoxville and the Jena Six—featuring panelists Rev. Reneé Kesler, President, The Beck Cultural Exchange Center and Africana Studies head, Shayla C. Nunnally Violette, and Faculty, Professor Darrell Kefentse, Moderator, and Clarence Brown Theatre director Tracey Copeland Halter.
Contact: Department of Theatre, Hana Sherman or Africana Studies, Shayla Nunnally
Asynchronous Online Project
Free and open to the public
Research Showcase
UTHC “Just Environments” Research Seminar Digital Poster Presentation
A digital poster presentation of research by UTK faculty and PhD students working on environmental racism, Black Ecologies, and rivers and waterways in relation to environmental justice.
Presenters:
Nikki Luke
Becky Jacobs
Maria Stehle
Matt Brauer
Jeffrey Amos
Contact: Maria Stehle, (Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, Just Environments Research Seminar convener)
A scholarly symposium free to UT faculty, students, and staff, brought to you by the Humanities Center at the University of Tennessee.
In Association with
Featured Speakers
Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA FRGS is a Professor in, and Chair of the Department Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, and is the Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate, an endowed professorship at Tufts University.
Dr. John Boyd is administrative endorsement internship supervisor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in the Clemmer College at East Tennessee State University.
Dr. Nikki Luke is an urban geographer and study energy and labor politics. Her research investigates the effects of urban energy governance on workers and communities and studies how uneven power relations rooted in race, gender, class, and ability shape energy policy and organizing for energy justice. Dr. Luke’s research has a regional focus on the US South; however, she is interested in working with students and organizations engaged within and outside the region.
Jon Hathaway received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 2010, where he studied the fate, transport, and removal of indicator bacteria in urban stormwater runoff. After a brief research fellowship at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and nearly two and half years at one of the nation’s leading ecological design and consulting firms, he joined the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Professor Tiffany Lethabo King’s work is animated by abolitionist and decolonial traditions within Black Studies and Native/Indigenous Studies. She is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (Duke University Press, 2020) which won the Lora Romero First Book Prize. She also co-edited Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism (Duke University Press, 2021).
Pam Nixon is a member of People Concerned About Chemical Safety, a grassroots organization in West Virginia.
Since she arrived in Knoxville, Black scholar and University of Tennessee, Knoxville, sociologist Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin has been building bridges between academia and local communities.
Pumpkin Starr is cultural worker, popular educator, musician, land justice and proud Queer Black Appalachia woman. For many years she has dedicated her time, energy and talents to the betterment of Black communities in Appalachia and the South. Her work, however, expands beyond these regional boundaries and she has been recognized by movement organizations nationally who often employ her skills as a trainer of People Movement assemblies & land justice workshops.
J. Drew Lanham (B.A. Zoology 1988; M.S. Zoology 1990; PhD Forest Resources 1997) is a native of Edgefield and Aiken, South Carolina. In his twenty years as Clemson University faculty he’s worked to understand how forest management impacts wildlife and how human beings think about nature. Dr. Lanham holds an endowed chair as an Alumni Distinguished Professor and was named an Alumni Master Teacher in 2012. In his teaching, research, and outreach roles, Drew seeks to translate conservation science to make it relevant to others in ways that are evocative and understandable. As a Black American he’s intrigued with how culture and ethnic prisms can bend perceptions of nature and its care.
William H. Turner, PhD, the fifth of ten children, was born in 1946 in the coal town of Lynch, Kentucky, in Harlan County. His grandfathers, father, four uncles and older brother were coal miners. Bill has spent his professional career studying and working on behalf of marginalized communities, helping them create opportunities in the larger world while not abandoning their important cultural ties.
J.T. Roane is an assistant professor at Rutgers University whose research interests include Black geographies, Black ecologies, Black Gender and Sexuality Studies, urban and rural geographies, African American and African Diaspora History, and political ecology.
Cornelius Eady is an American writer focusing largely on matters of race and society. His poetry often centers on jazz and blues, family life, violence, and societal problems stemming from questions of race and class. His poetry is often praised for its simple and approachable language.
Natalie Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Mojave American poet, language activist, former professional basketball player, and educator. She is enrolled in the Gila River Indian Community and identifies as Akimel O’odham. She is currently an Associate Professor at Arizona State University.
Saretta Morgan is a writer and artist. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she teaches Creative Writing at Arizona State University and contributes to the humanitarian aid efforts of No More Deaths Phoenix. She is the author of the chapbooks room for a counter interior and Feeling Upon Arrival. Currently her work addresses Black migration to the United States Southwest and its relationship to contemporary migration and border politics. Saretta holds degrees in writing from Columbia University and Pratt Institute. Most recently she has received grants and fellowships from Arizona Commission on the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. She is at work on Alt-Nature, her first full-length collection.
Kevin Dawson is an associate professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced and is the author of several award-winning articles. His book Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) received the Harriet Tubman Prize from the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, part of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in NYC. The award recognizes the best U.S.-published, nonfiction book on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery in the Atlantic World.