Robin McDowell’s work demonstrates how racial, environmental, and economic encounters in these spaces created conditions of Black life that shaped and continue to shape the foundations of North America.
About the Scholar
Robin McDowell is an Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research explores historical dimensions of environmental racism and visions for environmental justice for Black communities.
Through narratives of south Louisiana wetlands, sugar plantations, oil fields, and salt mines, her work demonstrates how racial, environmental, and economic encounters in these spaces created conditions of Black life that shaped and continue to shape the foundations of North America. Her current book project, Swamp Capitalism: The Roots of Environmental Racism, is a history of bonds between race and environment on a geologic timescale.
Her transdisciplinary research methodology draws on archives, oral histories, earth sciences, graphic design, and multimedia art making. She is a member of LifexCode: DH Against Enclosure hosted by Johns Hopkins University and served as co-convenor of History Design Studio at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research from 2018–2020. She holds a Ph.D. in African and African American Studies and an M.A. in History from Harvard University, an M.F.A. in Design from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
Presented as part of the Art and Design Visitors Series
