Bodies, Pollution, and Environmental Justice

by Julie Sze

In Fall 2004, I taught a twenty-five person undergraduate American Studies class entitled "Environmental Justice" at a large public university. The field of American Studies explores the cultures and practices of individuals and communities in the United States, as well as their transnational exchanges and impacts. It is an interdisciplinary field that is based on making "connections." Environmental justice, as a social movement, also makes important connections. It integrates social and environmental concerns linking social oppression, exploitation and injustice as inseparable from environmental degradation of the natural world. The environmental justice movement emerged in response to research that documented the disproportionate pollution exposure that people of color face in the United States and activism in lowincome and communities of color against this problem. Exemplary of its holistic world-view is the environmental justice definition of environment as a site where people "live, work, and play." For me, environmental justice is both a narrow set of questions (around who benefits from and who bears the burdens of environmental pollution, and how race, class, and nation affect this distribution), as well as a broad way of looking at the world. These key tenets of American Studies and environmental justice also dovetail with features of feminist pedagogy, particularly intersectional analyses, active learning, and the focus on applying knowledge to everyday life. Thus, American Studies, environmental justice, and feminist practice are well suited for each other, even though environmental racism and environmental justice are not often taught in humanities courses, but primarily in social science, particularly sociology and environmental policy.