Women often are on the front lines of climate change impacts, yet are uniquely poised to reshape our institutions towards resilience and gender equity. Women are increasingly in leadership roles, innovating sustainable approaches to scarcity, and building community around local solutions.
Join us on select Thursdays at 2 p.m. throughout the semester to hear perspectives from women working to reshape their discipline and community with innovative media, decolonization strategies, renewable energy programs, and activism. Organized by Dr. Katie Glover from the Climate Change Institute, and the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, through a McGillicuddy Humanities Center faculty grant. Part of the MHC’s 2020-2021 symposium on “The Story of Climate Change.” Free and open to the public with registration.
Register once and you’ll be sent a confirmation and link to join all five events in the series. Click here.
FEBRUARY 18: Ecofeminism in the Urban Landscape
Dylan O’Hara, PhD student, Dept. of History, University of Maine
O’Hara’s research focuses on urban development in the mid twentieth century United States and leftist activist movements. Her lecture on “Ecofeminism and the Urban Landscape” will focus on the social and political power dynamics of urban renewal in the 1960s.
MARCH 4: Indigenous Ways of Knowing
Dr. Bonnie Newsom, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Maine
Newsom is an Indigenous archaeologist interested in the pre-contact lifeways of Maine’s Native peoples. Through her research, she seeks to humanize people in the past by exploring concepts of identity, style, social boundaries, and human agency. This talk will focus on Indigenous ways of knowing as it relates to climate change.
MARCH 18: Indigenous science is activism
Sara Tenamoeata Kahanamoku, PhD student, Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley
Kahanamoku is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and Maʻohi (Tahitian) scientist from Haleʻiwa, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Like many others in their family, Sara was raised in the ocean, and it is this relationship that drives their scholarship and activism. Kahanamoku is currently a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley (Huichin Ohlone), with a research focus on the impacts of the climate crisis on California’s ocean ecosystems during the 19th and 20th centuries. Kahanamoku’s applied work focuses on the pono (equitable, relational) co-production of climate-related research and policy.
MARCH 25: Podcasts as Method
Dr. Kelsey Emard, Dept. of Geography, Oregon State University
Emard is a human-environment geographer and member of the Instructional Faculty in Geography at Oregon State University. Her current research examines shifting agricultural land uses and livelihoods driven by amenity development in rural areas, plant health/disease, and climate change. She is interested in creative feminist methods involving podcasting to analyze and understand often overlooked visceral data.
APRIL 8: Local Solutions to Climate Crises
Youth activists Ruby Mahoney and Ayano Ishimura, A Climate to Thrive on Mount Desert Island
Mahoney is a junior at Mount Desert Island High School and a prominent member of their ECO Team. Eager to make the world around her a better place, she’s worked with various local and national political and environmental justice organizations, including Sunrise Movement and A Climate To Thrive. She volunteered for the re-election campaign of junior senator and co-writer of the Green New Deal, Ed Markey-MA) in 2020 and plans to continue working as an organizer and activist.
Ayano Ishimura is a passionate and active environmental advocate and visual artist. She is currently a Senior at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor Maine and is the Co-President of her school’s ECO Team. She has worked on a variety of projects such as declaring a Climate Emergency in her town and expanding solar energy statewide, to strive towards climate justice in Maine. She takes inspiration from nature and fellow youth members to find creative and collaborative solutions to the climate crisis.