Unfamiliar Ecologies: Notes on a Black Feminist Ecoethic, a conversation with Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier
presented by: Susan Ratner '86 Writing and Speaking Pedagogy Series
About the Event:
In recent years, scholars have begun to pay more attention to the processes by
which anti-Black violence, hierarchies of gender, and coloniality create and mediate the
instability of global ecosystems. By meditating on the work of key contemporary Black women
eco-artists, Dr. Frazier's talk examines the possibilities that emerge when race, gender, and
decoloniality reconfigure traditional pedagogical perspectives in the environmental humanities.
The Susan S. Ratner Speaking & Writing Pedagogy Speaker Series dedicates itself to engaging with topics to writing & speaking pedagogy. Last fall, we invited our own Prof. Vrinda Condillac to discuss revising her pedagogy titled, “Beyond Anti-Racism as Palliation: Addressing White Supremacy in the Classroom” we invited Dr. Elizabeth Pryor (Smith College) to discuss her work about the use of the "N" word in the classroom, titled "The N-word in the Classroom". The year prior, we invited Dr. Carl Hart (Columbia University) to discuss communicating scientific information within and beyond academic spaces; his talk was titled "Communicating Science Beyond the Ivory Tower". Years prior we’ve had Ayesha Ramachandran and Alfie Guy (both from Yale University) with talks titled "Selfhood Matters: Politics and Teaching Now," and "Why Writing Matters," respectively.*
*This speaker series encourages students, faculty, staff, and community members to join the discussion.
About Dr. Frazier:
Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier is a Black Feminist Ecocritic—writing, researching, and teaching at the intersection of Black feminist theory and environmental thought. As Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Ask An Amazon she designs educational tools, curates community gatherings, gives lectures, and offers consulting services that serve Black Feminist Fuel for Sustainable Futures. She is also a Faculty Fellow in the Cornell University Department of English and in the Fall of 2021 she’ll begin her tenure-track appointment as an Assistant Professor of African American Literature.
Dr. Frazier received her Ph.D from the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Additionally, she received her Master of Arts from the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern, her Master of Arts from the American Studies program at Purdue University, and her Bachelor of Arts from the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College. Dr. Frazier is currently at work on her first book which reveals the ways that Black feminist art, literature and activism help us building alternative understandings of ecology.