Jeremy Kidwell @kidwellj@scholar.social

Hi colleagues in Environmental Humanities. Seems like lots of white folks are looking to decolonise their feeds, which is great. Getting educated about #anti-racism and amplifying non-white voices is a good place to start, but please don't stop there.

Found this piece by https://mobile.twitter.com/marinab52 in aeonmag really insightful: "Urban ethnographers do more harm than good in speaking for Black communities. They see only suffering, not diversity or joy"

https://aeon.co/amp/essays/urban-ethnographers-do-harm-in-speaking-for-black-communities

Looking for tips from #OctaviaButler fans. I'm doing a weeks lecture on her work for a class on Religion & Arts - talking about world making as ethics. But I can only assign a short story or individual chapter for student reading. Any recommendations?

It's rare to come across a piece of scholarly writing that I would describe as luminous in its wisdom. This piece, by Dawn Eddings Prince definitely sits in this category. I commend it to you... "An Exceptional Path: An Ethnographic Narrative Reflecting on Autistic Parenthood from Evolutionary, Cultural, and Spiritual Perspectives"

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/9WMWJ7SB7SJVIUB6TSHC?target=10.1111/j.1548-1352.2009.01081.x

Three least diverse occupations in the UK:

1. Farmers 0.8% (nonwhite)
2. Environment professionals 0.6%
3. Animal care services occupations n.e.c. 1.8%

Report here: https://bit.ly/3jaKsGO

H/T: https://bit.ly/2FQj0zz

Any academics interested in joining in on action research underway re: this, please DM

Does anyone else find it unnerving to read the news about Russian plans to mass deploy
vaccine match the post-apocalyptic back story for Octavia Butler's book Parable of the Sower?

Just up - my paper presentation at digital #EuARe20 on the probs with eco-hermeneutics, the trouble (but isn't it already obvious?) with slaver statues, other-than-human #temporalities and solutions lurking in Afro-Carribean philosophy. https://youtu.be/OSq8iOlxPd4?t=8110

Well, that's me sorted on music listening for the next 100 years. https://blackbandcamp.info/ (click "Discover") #BlackMusiciansMatter

Yikes. Just discovered whilst adding David Olusoga's book to one of my readings lists for next year that the LOC category for this book is: "Blacks -- Great Britain -- History". #librarians, looks like we've got some #blacklivesmatter work to do here?

I'll be chatting about the intersection of the "climate of history" (as Dipesh Chakrabarty names it ) and black philosophy of history in a #EuARe panel this afternoon. DM for zoom details if you're interested.

It is well worth reading the recent rant about monuments by Boris Johnson (birdsite link here: https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1271388180193914880) alongside James Baldwin's 1968 interview with Esquire. Baldwin could have given this speech yesterday. To the white British public. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23960/james-baldwin-cool-it/

Also Craig S Perez has put up a fab online free course here: https://thehawaiiindependent.com/story/black-eco-poetics/

I've not been able to find commensurate work (yet?) focussed on the UK or Europe, so if anyone out there has been thinking they'd like to try, zap me a DM. Very happy to put in some work on this, attribution not required.

If you're still wondering why there aren't more BIPOC in eco-professions (there are, but there should be more!), have a look over the groundbreaking work by environmental sociologist Dorceta E. Taylor, in particular her Green 2.0 initiative https://diversegreen.org/the-challenge

I've been learning so much from Sonya Posmentier's fantastic recent book, "Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature" on this. You can find an introduction here: https://syndicate.network/symposia/literature/cultivation-and-catastrophe/

Then I'd suggest taking a deep-dive into black eco-poetics. Start with Camille T. Dungy's amazing reader "Black Nature" with 4 centuries of black poetry on nature. More on that here: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126029674&t=1592559748135