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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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Spears, Ellen Griffith. "Toxic Knowledge: A Social History of Environmental Health in the New South's Model City, Anniston, Alabama, 1872-Present," Emory University, August 2006. Advisor: Allen Tullos
Situated within new critical regionalist schoalrship and drawing upon civil rights and environemental history, social justice theory, and studies of science, technology, and public health this American Studies dissertation examines the production of environmental inequalities in one locale in the U.S. South. Iron manufacturing, the rise of a science-based chemical industry, the production of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and Cold War military and chemical weapons policy drove economic development in Anniston, Alabama. Ecological and health assessments have documented disproportionate chemical exposures in African American and working class white neighborhoods in Anniston. This dissertation argues that these environemtal inequalities resulted not simply from one company’s practices, but also are due to pattersn of racialized space, industrial paternalism, and federal and state government inaction, as well as cultural beliefs about scientific authority.
“Toxic Knowledge” explores how the “Model City of the New South,” advertised as a healthful locale, became “Toxic Town USA.” The narrative examines the toxic burden of southern history, rooting today’s environmental justice activism in the long civil rights history of Anniston, site of the 1961 firebombing of a Freedom Riders bus.
The heart of the dispute over the PCB legacy are difficult scientific debates about cause and effect. The term “toxic knowledge,” a complex signifier used byt bioethicists to describe awareness of the potential onset of a disease or disorder for which no cure is known, provides a framework for discussing epistemological questions associated with environmental exposures. A reinvigorated conception of justice suggests the need for a precautionary approach, a transformative epistemology, and inclusive public participation in decision-making.
Combining ethnographic and extensive archival research, this dissertation relies on oral history interviews and participant observation as well as ecological and toxicological data as it examines one locale’s encounter with modern global processes and forces.
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