Community Events

December 4, 2024 | The Lichen Walk with A. Laurie Palmer

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Wednesday, December 04, 2024

3:00pm

Meet in front of Humanities 1

A not to miss opportunity to explore the UC Santa Cruz Campus, on and off the footpaths with A. Laurie Palmer!

As a conceptual frame to slow and redirect attention, The Lichen Museum invites you to zero in on inhabitants of slowed, horizontal, colorful and complex worlds while imagining radical possibilities for human being and relating. This walk invites participants to bend down and look closely at inhabitants of the planet who are already doing things differently as part of the process of imagining alternate futures for the rest of us.

A. Laurie Palmer writes, makes art, and teaches art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research-based work focuses on undoing and re-crafting human practices of relating with the material world towards building just, livable, and joyful social and environmental relations. Her most recent book, The Lichen Museum, explores lichens’ role as an anti-capitalist companion and climate change survivor. Palmer also works in collaboration with activist groups in solidarity across socioeconomic and racial difference in campaigns that employ imagination and art to resist and interrupt social and environmental injustice. Palmer collaborated with the art collective Haha for twenty years on site-based installation projects, and was a founding member of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project (CTJM) from 2010 to 2015 . The work of CTJM contributed to a broad-based campaign that won the first municipal Reparations for police violence in the US. After being based in Chicago for 30 years, Palmer moved to Santa Cruz in 2015 where she helped start the new Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA program at UCSC, an innovative, student-centered, graduate program focusing on environmental and social
justice.

This walk is part of the earth ecologies x technoscience series in co-sponsorship with the History of Consciousness Department.

January 23, 2025 | Book Celebration The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity

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Wednesday, January 23, 2025

4:00-6:00 PM

Rachel Carson College, Red Room

Join Science & Justice scholars together with the Center for Critical Urban & Environmental Studies (CUES), the Black Geographies Lab, and Sociology Department to celebrate the The Black Geographic (Duke University Press, 2023).

About The Black Geographic

The Black Geographic
Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke University Press, 2023)

Co-edited by S&J affiliate Camilla Hawthorne (Sociology, CRES), contributors to The Black Geographic explore the theoretical innovations of Black Geographies scholarship and how it approaches Blackness as historically and spatially situated. In studies that span from Oakland to the Alabama Black Belt to Senegal to Brazil, the contributors draw on ethnography, archival records, digital humanities, literary criticism, and art to show how understanding the spatial dimensions of Black life contributes to a broader understanding of race and space. They examine key sites of inquiry: Black spatial imaginaries, resistance to racial violence, the geographies of racial capitalism, and struggles over urban space. Throughout, the contributors demonstrate that Blackness is itself a situating and place-making force, even as it is shaped by spatial processes and diasporic routes. Whether discussing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century abolitionist print records or migration and surveillance in Niger, this volume demonstrates that Black Geographies is a mode of analyzing Blackness that fundamentally challenges the very foundations of the field of geography and its historical entwinement with colonialism, enslavement, and imperialism. In short, it marks a new step in the evolution of the field.

The Black Geographic  is available at Duke University Press.

Contributors. Anna Livia Brand, C.N.E. Corbin, Lindsey Dillon, Chiyuma Elliott, Ampson Hagan, Camilla Hawthorne, Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta, Jovan Scott Lewis, Judith Madera, Jordanna Matlon, Solange Muñoz, Diana Negrín, Danielle Purifoy, Sharita Towne

April 23, 2025 | TechnoScience Improv

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025

12:15-2:00pm

Humanities 1, Room 210

This roundtable improv brings together ten UCSC scholars working on social, historical, and cultural studies of science, technology and medicine. The event will be structured around eight open, improvised conversations. Rather than structured around formal talks, each conversation will start with a question from a different panelist exploring emerging practices, speculative transformations, and critical imaginings of technoscience, health and ecology.

Convener:

Dimitris Papadopoulos

Participants:

Karen Barad is Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness.

James Doucet-Battle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Science & Justice Research Center.

Kat Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor in the History Department.

Dimitris Papadopoulos is Professor of History of Consciousness in the Department of History of Consciousness.

Maria Puig de la Bellacasa is Professor of History of Consciousness in the Department of History of Consciousness.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science & Justice Research Center.

Warren Sack is Professor of the Software Arts in the Film + Digital Media Department.

Kriti Sharma is an Assistant Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

Matt Sparke is Professor of Politics in the Politics Department and Co-Director of Global and Community Health.

Zac Zimmer is an Associate Professor of Literature in the Literature Department.

This talk is part of the earth ecologies x technoscience series in co-sponsorship with the History of Consciousness Department.

October 30, 2024 | Walking in the Ecotone with Jim Clifford

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024

2:30pm

Humanities 1

A not to miss opportunity to explore of the UC Santa Cruz Campus, on and off the footpaths with Jim Clifford! We’ll wander among the trees, down in the ravines, out in the meadows. Pooling our different knowledges of environmental, social, cultural, technological and architectural history, we will try to disentangle the overlapping layers that constitute a unique environment.
 
Jim Clifford is Emeritus Professor in the History of Consciousness Department. Since his retirement he has photographed the campus, co-curated an exhibition about its history https://exhibits.library.ucsc.edu/exhibits/show/an-uncommon-place and published a book of Images and texts, In the Ecotone , that evokes the site’s “poetics of space,” its planning/design history, and its utopian potential (in pdf here: https://people.ucsc.edu/~jcliff/books.html)
Co-sponsored by Geoecologies and Technoscience Conversations, History of Consciousness and the Science and Justice Research Center

May 29, 2024 (POSTPONED) | Book Celebration The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity

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Wednesday, May 29, 2024 – POSTPONED

Join Science & Justice scholars together with the Center for Critical Urban & Environmental Studies (CUES) and The Black Geographies Lab, in Rachel Carson College Red Room, to celebrate the The Black Geographic (Duke University Press, 2023).

About The Black Geographic

The Black Geographic
Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke University Press, 2023)

Co-edited by S&J affiliate Camilla Hawthorne (Sociology, CRES), contributors to The Black Geographic explore the theoretical innovations of Black Geographies scholarship and how it approaches Blackness as historically and spatially situated. In studies that span from Oakland to the Alabama Black Belt to Senegal to Brazil, the contributors draw on ethnography, archival records, digital humanities, literary criticism, and art to show how understanding the spatial dimensions of Black life contributes to a broader understanding of race and space. They examine key sites of inquiry: Black spatial imaginaries, resistance to racial violence, the geographies of racial capitalism, and struggles over urban space. Throughout, the contributors demonstrate that Blackness is itself a situating and place-making force, even as it is shaped by spatial processes and diasporic routes. Whether discussing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century abolitionist print records or migration and surveillance in Niger, this volume demonstrates that Black Geographies is a mode of analyzing Blackness that fundamentally challenges the very foundations of the field of geography and its historical entwinement with colonialism, enslavement, and imperialism. In short, it marks a new step in the evolution of the field.

The Black Geographic  is available at Duke University Press.

Contributors. Anna Livia Brand, C.N.E. Corbin, Lindsey Dillon, Chiyuma Elliott, Ampson Hagan, Camilla Hawthorne, Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta, Jovan Scott Lewis, Judith Madera, Jordanna Matlon, Solange Muñoz, Diana Negrín, Danielle Purifoy, Sharita Towne

October 21, 2024 | Book Celebrations: Toxic City & A People’s History of SFO

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Monday, October 21, 2024

3:00-5:00 PM

Humanities 1-210

Join the Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies to celebrate the release of two important new books by UCSC faculty exploring power, historical development, and environmental justice in the Bay Area: Lindsey Dillon’s Toxic City and Eric Porter’s A People’s History of SFO (both published by University of California Press). The authors will be in conversation with graduate students from the departments of History and Sociology.

A limited number of both books are available for graduate students – please contact kgalinde@ucsc.edu to receive a copy. Books are available for sale via the UC Press website for 30% off using the code UCPSAVE30.

About the Authors and Books

Book Cover for Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco (University of California Press, 2024).

Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco explores the impact of green gentrification in Bayview-Hunters Point, a historically Black neighborhood in San Francisco. Lindsey examines how revitalization efforts often threaten to displace long-time residents who have fought for toxic cleanup and urban redevelopment as a means of reparative justice. She links these struggles to broader issues of environmental racism and the legacy of slavery, arguing for a vision of environmental justice within the context of reparations. Lindsey Dillon is author of Toxic City and a critical human geographer and Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.

 

 

 

A People’s History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport (University of California Press, 2024).A People’s History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport examines the history of San Francisco International Airport to uncover a rich narrative of development and power in the Bay Area from the eighteenth century to today. Eric highlights SFO’s pivotal role in the region’s evolution as a hub of commerce, innovation, and influence. By examining the airport’s colonial roots and its impact on trade, social dynamics, and environmental change, Porter reveals how individual actions intersect with larger systems of power. The book concludes by confronting the climate crisis and the challenges it poses to SFO and the surrounding community. Eric Porter is Professor of History and History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, where he also holds appointments in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Music Departments. His research and teaching interests include Black cultural and intellectual history, US urban and cultural history, and jazz and improvisation studies. Porter is author of A People’s History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport (University of California Press, 2024).

 

Hosted by the Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES).

Co-Sponsored by the departments of History of Consciousness and Sociology, the Division of Social Sciences, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

February 21, 2023 | “Why Is Publishing So White?” An Evening with Richard Jean So

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Tuesday, February 21, 2023

5:00-6:30 PM

Humanities 1, 210

On Tuesday, February 21 at 5:00pm, Kresge’s Media & Society Series speaker, Richard Jean So, will present on “Why is Publishing so White?” (RJS flier PDF)

More on Kresge’s Media & Society Series can be found on the series website.

Richard Jean So is associate professor of English and Digital Humanities at McGill University. He uses computational and data-driven methods to study contemporary culture, from the novel to Netflix to social media. He has published academic articles in PMLA and Critical Inquiry and public-facing pieces in The New York Times and Atlantic. His most recent book is Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction (Columbia UP, 2021) and he is currently working on Fast Culture, Slow Justice: Race and Writing in the Digital Age.

Co-sponsored by Computational Media, Literature, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Science & Justice Research Center, and the Center for Cultural Studies.

April 30, 2021 | Book Launch! How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens

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On Friday, April 30, 2021 from 12:00pm–1:00pm PDT, S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Sociology Hillary Angelo, joined in conversation with Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Neil Brenner, and Claudio Benzecry to discuss and celebrate the launch of her book, How Green Became Good:Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens.

The book is available at: The University of Chicago Press (use discount code UCPSOC for 20% off)

About the Book and Conversationalists

Abstract greens

Book Cover for Hillary Angelo’s How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2021)

As projects like Manhattan’s High Line, Chicago’s 606, China’s eco-cities, and Ethiopia’s tree-planting efforts show, cities around the world are devoting serious resources to urban greening. Formerly neglected urban spaces and new high-end developments draw huge crowds thanks to the considerable efforts of city governments. But why are greening projects so widely taken up, and what good do they do? In How Green Became Good, Hillary Angelo uncovers the origins and meanings of the enduring appeal of urban green space, showing that city planners have long thought that creating green spaces would lead to social improvement. Turning to Germany’s Ruhr Valley (a region that, despite its ample open space, was “greened” with the addition of official parks and gardens), Angelo shows that greening is as much a social process as a physical one. She examines three moments in the Ruhr Valley’s urban history that inspired the creation of new green spaces: industrialization in the late nineteenth century, postwar democratic ideals of the 1960s, and industrial decline and economic renewal in the early 1990s. Across these distinct historical moments, Angelo shows that the impulse to bring nature into urban life has persistently arisen as a response to a host of social changes, and reveals an enduring conviction that green space will transform us into ideal inhabitants of ideal cities. Ultimately, however, she finds that the creation of urban green space is more about how we imagine social life than about the good it imparts. 

Hillary Angelo is Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliated with the SJRC at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Claudio Benzecry is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and the author of The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry (forthcoming 2021).

Neil Brenner is the Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Chicago. His most recent books are New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question (Oxford, 2019) and Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays (Bauwelt Fundamente, 2016), as well as the edited volume Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization (Jovis, 2014).

Robin Wagner-Pacifici is a University Professor affiliated with the Department of Sociology at The New School for Social Research. She is the author of a number of books, most recently What is an Event? (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict’s End (2005).

June 24, 2020 | V is for Veracity

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On June 24, 2020, SJRC Founding Director Jenny Reardon joined Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication) for a conversation on Science & Justice, and to explore our intersecting work on democracy, justice, information, and truth.

As Reardon’s recently written in relation in “V is for Veracity” about Covid-19: An “us” versus “them” mindset engendered by the metaphor of war focuses our attention on viruses, vaccines, and victory. It leads us to believe that there is a discrete enemy out there—a virus—that we must defeat. Yet, as we focus on this so-called frontline, we risk missing the deeper, more systemic problems. All our efforts, staying home and holding the frontline, may only lead us into the next battle, if we do not attend now to the unraveling of relations that sustain trustworthy truths—the veracity required to live collectively.

Refer also to the SSRC article, “V is for veracity.”

The conversation was recorded and will be linked here once available.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.