Noxious New York - Race, Class and Garbage

Time: 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Location: The New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY 10029

Public Lecture

FREE but registration required: http://www.nyam.org/events/2015/2015-08-03.html

Drawing on her award-winning book Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, Julie Sze will examine the link between race, class, and garbage with a focus on how culturally and politically disenfranchised communities re-work long-standing conflations between polluted places and peoples. Throughout NYC’s history, but particularly in the second half of the 20th Century, community organizations have worked through social movements and policy-making to improve the physical landscape and public health in their neighborhoods. The talk will address case studies around NYC garbage politics in the 1980s and 1990s, but looks at older historical moments, and outside the City.

Julie Sze is a Professor and the Director of American Studies at UC Davis. She is also the founding director of the Environmental Justice Project at UC Davis. She received her doctorate from New York University in American Studies. Sze’s book, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, won the 2008 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, awarded annually to the best published book in American Studies. Her second book is called Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis (2015). She has authored and co-authored 35 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics and has given talks in China, Abu Dhabi, Canada, Germany, France, and Italy.

This is the second lecture in our history of public health series "Garbage and the City", produced in collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York and ARCHIVE Global and supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.