Winter Break: Environmental Justice in New Orleans

Course Description

ENTS 100. Environmental Justice This first-year seminar explores the intersection of social justice and environmental stewardship, with particular attention to issues of environmental justice. We focus on New Orleans as a key case study. Course goals include: learning about the political and ethical issues involved in rebuilding New Orleans; developing the ability to reason about issues of environmental justice; becoming familiar with the literature on and methods used to study environmental justice; understanding how studying the social sciences can help you become a more effective citizen; learning how to apply the theories you learn in class to real-world events. This is a two-term course sequence which includes a ten day winter break field trip to New Orleans in early December. 6, S/CR/NC, SS, Fall—K. Smith

ENTS 101. Environmental Justice in New Orleans This course is the second part of the first year student seminar on environmental justice. Students will spend two weeks in New Orleans in December, studying environmental justice by interviewing government officials, activists and residents. Then they will spend the five-week half term in winter producing a research paper or documentary based on their fall seminar and off-campus experience. 6, S/CR/NC, SS, Winter—K. Smith

Faculty Director

Kimberly Smith

Professor Smith earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and her law degree at the Boalt School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. She teaches courses in constitutional law, the judicial process, American political thought, political theory, and environmental politics and policy. She has published articles in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Wisconsin Journal of Environmental Law, Women's Studies, California Law Review, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, and Environmental Ethics. Professor Smith's book, The Dominion of Voice: Riot, Reason and Romance in Antebellum Politics (University Press of Kansas, 1999) was awarded the 2001 Merle Curti Intellectual History Award by the Organization of American Historians. Her second book, Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace, was published in 2003, and her third book, African American Environmental Thought: Foundations was published by University Press of Kansas in Spring 2007. Professor Smith serves as the pre-law adviser. She was on leave during 2007-08, having been awarded the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Fellowship at the Princeton University Center for Environmental Studies. She served as their Visiting Professor in Environment and the Humanities.

Program Dates

The Winter Break trip will take place December 1-14, 2008.