Each year, CLACS hosts a Research Colloquium series which combines a graduate level course with a speaker series. The course is co-taught by faculty of distinct disciplines, bringing together different academic fields of study. The event series invites top scholars and practitioners to present their work and research to the NYU community as well as the general public. These cutting-edge themed colloquium series and conferences are the result of faculty working groups.
Research Colloquium
This course examines the relationship between environmentalism, nature conservation and racial justice. Additionally, it discusses the critical role that the histories of settler colonialism and ongoing capitalist paradigms have played in the ideologies and approaches that have shaped the teaching and academic study of environmental justice. Centering the experiences and articulations of Indigenous, Brown, Black and frontline communities, and how they challenge regimes of power, we discuss a range of concepts and theoretical frameworks such as ecological apartheid, food justice, the climate crisis and postcolonial theory. More so, this class examines their experiences and ways of knowing, along with their ongoing work in these fields—the vast majority of which is largely absent or minimized with academic discourses and global deliberations about environmental values, protection, health, and management.
Withal, our exploration looks at how and through what means the aforementioned communities continue to be harmed and systematically silenced as they navigate the ongoing erosion of functioning natural ecosystems while often shouldering the frontlines activism, whistle-blowing, and protection. With a focus on the Americas, this course discusses how those who represent Indigenous, Brown, Black, and frontline communities not only continue to bear the environmental burden of the modern age, but also disproportionately shoulder violence for their leadership in demanding truth, justice and environmental protection. Through a combination of: 1) facilitated forums focused on frontline communities and their experiences; 2) critical engagement of theories and concepts giving voice to the oppressed navigating environmental injustices, and 3) an appraisal of literature examining the racial and environmental intersectionality, this syllabus aims to interrogate and disrupt hegemonic power within the context of environmental concerns.
Guided by the belief that institutions of higher education have a duty to support accurate and responsible representation of the most crucial concerns of our time, we believe it is essential to provide a platform for meaningful dialogue through which those most affected can speak with autonomy and agency. Such a strategy avoids narratives that serve to reproduce common tropes of marginalized bodies as mere victims perpetuating the lack of both acknowledgement and celebration of the labor, expertise and ongoing leadership BIPOC peoples within the environmental movement.
Colloquium events are open to the public. Click on the links below to learn more about that week's presenters.
February 29, 2024 | Our Labor, Our Voices: Recognizing Afro-descendant Peoples’ role in securing nature in the Americas
March 25, 2024 | Sexuality, Gender and Climate Vulnerability in the Caribbean
April 22, 2024| New Perspectives on Land, Territory and Agrarian Reforms in Bolivia, Peru and Mexico
May 6, 2024| Mangroves: Bomba, Afro-Descendants & Environmental Activism
Dr. Kaia Shivers is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Liberal Studies who focuses on writing, journalism and food sustainability. She has been a media practitioner for almost three decades and currently runs the award-winning Ark Republic news. For the past seven years, Dr. Shivers worked in the food space as an editor and reporter for seven years. She is a media studies scholar focusing on how diasporas employ media as a source of agency in defining identity.
In 2020, Dr. Shivers launched the Black Farmers Index, an online directory listing Black growers in the U.S. and its territories, thus shifting her focus to agriculture. The project was a way to deal with coming food shortages she projected would happen in the U.S.
The project was launched while Dr. Shivers was the LS Faculty lead teacher at NYU’s Florence campus, while she was reporting food security issues in the country. Today, it has been noted by the Organic Trade Association and other agricultural agencies, as the most comprehensive, public database on Black growers in the U.S. It is also the largest, free digital listing in place.
Eventually, the media project turned into a charitable campaign she now spearheads. During this time, Dr. Shivers embarked on research into the U.S. and international food systems to understand its history, strengths, and ultimately, its flaws that have led to a global food security issue.
For her work, she has been tapped by the U.S.D.A. and the Organic Trade Association to provide insight of Black farmers in the U.S. as a way to diversify agribusiness and create best practices of justice, equity and inclusivity. In Spring 2022, Dr. Shivers’ course, A Seat at the Table: Food Security in Communities of Color, was approved by NYU Abu Dhabi, for her to teach for the Summer 2023 J-Term.
Dr. Leo R. Douglas is a full-time Clinical Associate Professor here at NYU. I am the immediate past-president of BirdsCaribbean, the largest international NGO focusing on the conservation of birds and their habitats within the greater Caribbean region. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, and holds a Columbia University degree in Environmental Policy. Previously, Dr. Douglas taught about Conservation Conflicts, Conservation Marketing, and Global Biodiversity at Columbia University and St. Georges University. In 2012 he co-founded and am a director of an organization working to conserve biodiversity in the Latin American and the Caribbean, namely The Conservation Leadership in the Caribbean Fellowship Program (CLiC). As well, he is the former co-chair of the Society for Conservation Biology’s (SCB) diversity, equity and inclusivity committee.
Dr. Pamela Calla is a Bolivian anthropologist engaged with issues of gender, race, class, and state formation in Latin America. She is currently a Clinical Professor at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at New York University and received the Dr. Martin Luther King Faculty Award in 2016-2017 at that same institution. She co-created and coordinates the Feminist Constellations Platform (2013-Present) and the Working Group on Racisms in Comparative Perspective (2010-Present) at CLACS-NYU. She co-founded the Observatory on Racism in Bolivia (2007-2017) and the Red de Accion e Investigacion Anti-Racista en las Americas, RAIAR (2010-Present), an initiative launched by the Universidad de la Cordillera (Bolivia) and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas. As part of RAIAR, she participated in the collaborative research-action process and contributed to the book Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas. From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash (Lexington Books, 2020) with the Chapter “The Difficulties of Connecting Anti-Extractivist and Anti-Racist Struggles in Contemporary Bolivia: The Weight of Patriarchy”. She is coeditor of Antropología del Estado: Dominación y prácticas contestatarias en America Latina (2007). She was an Associate Researcher of the "The State of the State in Bolivia", a project of the Informe sobre Desarrollo Humano, 2007, United Nations Development Project and coeditor and author of Observando el Racismo: Racismo y Regionalismo en el Proceso Constituyente Boliviano, Agenda Defensorial No. 11 and 13, 2008. Defensor del Pueblo and Universidad de la Cordillera, Bolivia.
The Spring 2024 colloquium is presented by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Additional sessions are made possible with support from NYU's Office of Sustainability, Liberal Studies and the Department of Environmental Studies.