Our World

A Black child and adult hold hands and smile at each other while walking down a dirt trail in a lush, green, natural setting.

This work examines the Earth’s interconnected systems to develop sustainable strategies for environmental conservation and protections.

climate · land · water · air · nature

Climate

Readings

  • Olufemi O. Taiwo, Boston Review, “The Fight for Reparations Cannot Ignore Climate Change.”
  • Malm, Andreas (2021). How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Verso. (Book)
  • Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi O. 2025. “What’s Next: Why Reparations Require Climate Justice” in Reconsidering Reparations. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books (Book chapter)

Multimedia

Organizations

Land

Readings

  • Walter Johnson, Boston Review, “American Bottom.”
  • Burns, Rebecca. On Poisoned Grounds: East Chicago’s Legacy of Lead Pollution and Looking the Other Way (book)
  • Heynen, Nik, Harold A. Perkins, and Parama Roy. “The political ecology of uneven urban green space: The impact of political economy on race and ethnicity in producing environmental inequality in Milwaukee.” Urban Affairs Review 42, no. 1 (2006): 3-25. 
  • Platt, Lorne. “Beer Gardens, Breweries, and Urban Growth: A History of Constructed Nature and Environmental Justice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” The Wisconsin Geographer (academic/open access)
  • Jenkins, J. R. (2024). Black Escapes and Black Wishlands. The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945, 115-132.
  • McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.
  • Loughran, Kevin. 2020. “Urban Parks and Urban Problems: An historical perspective on green space development as a cultural fix.” Urban Studies
  • Moulton, A.A. and I. Salo, “Black Geographies and Black Ecologies as Insurgent Ecocriticism,” Environment and Society: Advances in Research, Vol. 13 (2022): 156-174.
  • Rivers, F.R. and J. Stephens, “Preserving Heirs’ Property in Coastal South Carolina (Charleston, South Carolina),” Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the American Metropolis, M.P. Pavel (Ed.), The MIT Press, 183-193.

Multimedia

Organizations

Water

Readings

  • Walter Johnson, Boston Review, “American Bottom.”
  • Jacobs, Fayola. 2-19. “Black feminism and radical planning: New directions for disaster planning research.” Planning Theory, 18(1):24-39. (academic article)
  • Morrell, Erica, and Dalvery Blackwell. “Spatialized intersectionality: gendered and racialized residential segregation and the Milwaukee lead crisis.” Environmental Justice 15, no. 1 (2022): 31-38. (academic article)
  • Salinsky, Jordan I. “Comparing the 2014–2016 Flint water crisis to the 1993 Milwaukee Cryptosporidium Outbreak.” Environmental Justice 9, no. 4 (2016): 119-128.(paywall)
  • Michael Kleber Diggs, My Weight In Water: Notes of A Fat Black Swimmer, footnotepress.com/books/my-weight-in-water/
  • Gaber, N. (2021). Blue lines and blues infrastructures: Notes on water, race, and space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39(6), 1073-1091. doi-org.dartmouth.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/02637758211065451 (Original work published 2021)
  • Roane, J. T. “Black ecologies, subaquatic life, and the Jim Crow enclosure of the tidewater.” Journal of Rural Studies 94 (2022): 227-238.
  • Butler, L. J., Scammell, M. K., & Benson, E. B. (2016). The Flint, Michigan, water crisis: a case study in regulatory failure and environmental injustice. Environmental Justice, 9 ( 4), 93-97.
  • Monica Lewis-Patrick and We the People of Detroit. Mapping the Water Crisis: The Dismantling of African-American Neighborhoods in Detroit (student-accessible, Detroit-specific EJ resource).
  • Madhu, Sruthi, and Soumya Jose. 2025. “Black Geographies and Trans-Corporeality: Terrains of Toxicity in Cullud Wattah.” GeoHumanities 11 (2): 458–73.

Multimedia

Organizations

Fellow Projects

Air

Readings

Multimedia

Organizations

Nature

Readings

  • Dungy, Camille T. Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. (book)
  • Sharkey, Erin. A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soils to Stars. (book)
  • Montgomery, B. L. (2021). Lessons from plants. Harvard University Press (book)
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer  (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. First Edition, Milkweed Editions. (book)
  • Kimmerer,  Robin Wall, Monique Smith-Gray, & Nicole Neidhardt (2022). Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Zest Books. (book)

Multimedia

Organizations

Other Resources

Fellow Projects

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