From Social Justice to Environmental Justice

We will examine environmental justice cases in the context of the social justice movements that have preceded them, paying particular attention to how these earlier movements have influenced the challenges and tactics of environmental justice today. Drawing on the work of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and others, we will explore the roles race, class, gender, and religion have played in confronting poverty, racism, and violence. We will then investigate contemporary environmental justice movements, using case studies to explore how these movements are rooted in, as well as distinct from, social justice movements of earlier periods (ENVS 0215 or any 100 or 200 level course in Religion or by permission) (not open to students who have taken ENVS 1028)