Environmental Justice and History

The Professionalization Workshop for Secondary Teachers

The Center for Historical Interpretation
The Department of History of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
May 13, 2017, Illini Union Room 210 (General Lounge)

Schedule of Events

9:30-9:45 Welcome Orientation and Introductions by Robert Morrissey,

Roderick Wilson and Deirdre Ruscitti Harshman

9:45-10:45 The Significance of Environmental Justice in U.S. History: an

Introduction by Robert Morrissey, Department of History, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
This session will consider the history of American Environmentalism as
a political movement in American history since the mid-1960s, its high-water
mark. We will explore how one of the most powerful political movements in
American history fractured and declined, in part because of its inability to
unite diverse concerns and agendas. Well look at Gary, Indiana, in particular,
a place where environmentalists had dramatic successes at the precise
moment when they were sowing seeds of a wider failure.

10:45-11:00 Break

11:00-12:00 Wild Birds and the Nature of Environmental Justice

Presenter: Professor Kristin Hoganson, Department of History, Ethnography of
the University Initiative, Department of Gender and Womens Studies, and
Center for Global Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
This session will use the case study of wild birds to frame the question:
what is environmental justice? How did different groups understand that
question roughly a century ago, when bird protection became a matter of
concern for Progressive Era activists? Why did bird protection gain
substantial political traction in that time period and what can this
environmental issue tell us about rights, responsibilities, and power?

12:00-12:30 Lunch

12:30-1:30 Reading the History of Landscapes in Illinois

Presenter: David Lehman, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Why is Illinois so square? In this session we will look at historical
documents related to the United States annexation of land and selective
authorization of land ownership. We will discuss the Public Land Survey
System, land treaties between factions of the Potawatomi Nation and the
U.S., land patents, and local pioneer histories as well as their long-term
effects.
1:30-2:30 Slow Violence and Global Environmentalism
Presenter: Professor Roderick Wilson, Department of History, Department of
East Asian Languages and Cultures, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies,
and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Global Studies Center, University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Unlike the effects of hurricanes, floods, or gas-line explosions, the
effects of pollution and other forms of environmental degradation often evade
the headlines and our awareness. In this session, you will be introduced to
the concept of slow violence and how people from around the world have
responded to these existential threats to their health, livelihood, and
communities. The information and materials provided in this session are
designed with two aims: 1) to help students recognize the slow moving and
often distant sources of environmental decline, and 2) to introduce them to
the varieties of environmentalisms both at home and around the globe.

2:30-2:45 Break

2:45-3:45 Peasants, Commodities, Colonialism

Presenter: Professor Tariq Ali, Department of History and the Center for South
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an
enormous expansion in peasant commodity production in the colonized
tropics of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Peasant smallholders
began devoting more and more of their land and labor to producing plant-
based raw materials and calories for European industry and industrial
workers: for example, rice, wheat, sugar, cotton, cocoa, peanuts, coffee, jute,
hemp, rubber, cocoa and peanuts. This session will examine how these
commodities knitted peasant farms across the colonized tropics into a global
countryside, subjecting peasant smallholders across the world to the
speculations of global capital. This was a new phase in the history of global
capital, as peasant land and labor steadily replaced plantations and slave
labor in America and the Caribbean as the source of plants that fueled
European industry. European, especially, British imperialists and capitalists
imagined peasant commodity production as indicating progress. They
claimed that a global economy constituted by markets, prices, and the
entrepreneurial peasant smallholder was truer to the spirit of capitalism than
the brute violence of slavery. This session will critically evaluate British
imperialists self-serving claims that peasant commodity production
represented progress and advancement towards a truly capitalist global
economy.

3:45-4:45 Discover and Uncover: Environmental Justice Resources

Presenter: Professor Lynne Marie Rudasill, University Library, and Global
Studies Librarian and Political Science Subject Specialist

4:45-5:00 Wrap Up and Fill Out Evaluations