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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Sze, Julie. "Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice," American Studies, New York University, September 2003.
Beginning in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, a number of environmental justice campaigns emerged in response to land use development proposals for noxious facilities in predominantly low-income and minority areas of New York City. Examples include transportation infrastructure (highways and bus depots), sludge and sewage treatment plants, garbage transfer stations, and power plants. Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice is a cultural and political history of the environmental justice movement in New York City. I examine the politics of urban development, environment and health through community-based activism in four minority and low-income communities in New York City: Sunset Park and Williamsburg/ Greenpoint in Brooklyn, West Harlem in Manhattan and the South Bronx. I look at how and why these specific neighborhoods were home to such a large number of noxious polluting facilities and the implication of this concentration in terms of environmental health, utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to environmental justice politics that focuses on broad topics such as the impact of globalization, privatization and deregulation on communities of color. I use historical analysis to frame contemporary problems, particularly the role of race and class in early 20th Century public health and urban planning movements. I argue that New York City activists used the national discourse of the environmental justice movement as a means for negotiating the place and identity of low-income minority communities in the face of urban change. This study illuminates the larger social and political meaning of urban environmental justice activism. I examine how local actors engaged with the politics of science, law, community planning, and environmental health research. In doing so, these actors proactively engaged the politics of urban development and created new knowledge about health in the urban environment, particularly around the air pollution problem and high rates of minority asthma.
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