This is a CODIE-organized event.

Inspired by recent calls from environmental historians to center spaces other than “wilderness,” this roundtable brings together interdisciplinary scholarship on environments of incarceration. Beyond bringing carceral and environmental studies into conversation, participants and audience members are invited to discuss the ethical imperatives of such scholarship. Like the “Anthropocene” for environmental historians, “carceral” has become an academic buzzword. Yet, in an age of mass incarceration, migrant detainment, and police brutality, the carceral state is also an urgent human rights issue that intersects with environmental justice issues and impending waves of climate migration. What do scholars owe their subjects? What social (in addition to scholarly) interventions can we make?

Participants will offer brief presentations of their own research.

Alison Laurence will chair the discussion that follows.

Participants:

Professor Anthony Hatch, "Biotechnologies in Their Carceral Operating Environments"

Professor Laurel Mei-Singh, "Carceral Conservationism: Policing the Planetary Crisis in Hawai‘i"

Elizabeth Hargrett, "The Environmental Histories of San Quentin State Prison"

Samuel Klee, " Caging Cantaloupe Fields: Food, Catholic Ministries, and Carceral Foodscapes in Chesterfield, Missouri - 1940-1973"

Dr. Brian Tyrrell, "Railbirds but No Ponies to Watch: Landscapes of Leisure and Incarceration at California's Race Tracks"