Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...
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Documenting the City of Refugees

Fuel for Thought: Climate Change as Class War

The climate crisis has its material foundations in the capitalist system of production; Syracuse University geographer Matthew Huber proposes that tackling the problem requires changing how production is organized

Huber is essentially correct that the climate crisis is for all intents and purposes a class war, that of the transnational national capitalist class against the rest of us...

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Fuel for Thought: Climate Change as Class War

A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

Alexandra Kleeman chats with Helen Schulman about her new book, Something New Under the Sun

_____ Upon the publication of her new novel, Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), New School faculty Alexandra Kleeman sat down with Helen Schulman, faculty and fiction chair at the Creative Writing program, to talk about Los Angeles, the climate crisis, and writing about the very near future. The interview was presented by the Creative Writing ...
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A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

The United States Is in Recovery

What Texas, white supremacy and coronavirus can teach us about American history

"In the exchange, Americans saw a president who cared, and a government that finally, after its previous leaders had told them to get out of a terrible catastrophe on their own, responded to their needs."...

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The United States Is in Recovery

Climate Change and Forced Migration

People are displaced every second, and often by environmental calamities

Although most displaced people will not cross an international border, many will -- and their legal status can be precarious. Generally, they will not qualify as refugees under the Refugee Convention, which protects people with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or ...
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Climate Change and Forced Migration

The Moral Clarity of Children

What Climate Strikers Have to Teach Elizabeth Warren

The quick answer was: yes, Warren’s speech did feel monumental. And yes, the Climate Strike was an event of global significance. The two rallies inspire the assembled crowds, and me. Most importantly, their positioning as bookends to the week’s political news brought into focus how these two agendas might intersect. Warren highlighted the innovations and ...
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Reproduction At The End Of Humanity

Refusing Apocalypse and Dismantling The Threat Of The New

My interest in this growing sense of reproductive unease has been nourished by research into the impact of housing insecurity on millennials’ intimate lives. Here, generational inequality generates feelings of thwartedness across a range of experiences -- romantic partnerships are doomed by the inability to leave a parental home, barriers ...
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The New Trail of Tears

How climate change is forcing the relocation of species, including our own

In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, designed to appropriate to the United States lands occupied by aboriginal Americans. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, but the army under Commander in Chief Andrew Jackson acted anyway. Now a lightning rod for condemnation of the expropriation of indigenous property, Jackson ...
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Will the Idea of Intergenerational Justice Mobilize Us Into Climate Action?

An Interrogation of the Politics of Climate Change

As a result of these factors, climate communication strategies used thus far have just not gained traction. One of the principle questions scientists, social scientists, journalists, and media scholars are currently grappling with is: what is the best way to frame the danger of climate change in a way that ...
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