Launched in the Spring of 2020, the Race and Climate Reading group was created in response to Cooper Union student requests to invest in discussions that center issues of race and social justice and how they intersect with the climate crisis that we are all deeply mired in at the moment. As we all know, the climate crisis effects communities of color first, and disproportionately. And, as the readings all attest, this is reflective of and a culmination of centuries of oppression, and settler colonialism.

The concept of the group:

• We read about the intersection of race and climate across multiple genres
• We privilege writers and thinkers of color

Here is a communally crafted bibliography from which students chose the texts we plan to read together.

Below are the dates and titles for this semester. All texts are available on Ebook Central now. 

October 22, 5-7pm: Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle by Katherine McKittrick (2016) 

November 19, 5-7pm: Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Bruce Erickson, et al (2010) 

December 17, 5-7pm: Making Kin not Population : Reconceiving Generations, edited by Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway (2018). We will focus on chapter one, "Black AfterLives Matter: Cultivating Kinfulness as Reproductive Justice" by Ruha Benjamin 

If you have any trouble accessing the materials through the Cooper library, email circulation@cooper.edu. The library will fix whatever might be wrong right away. 

For the zoom link, questions or comments, email nada.ayad@cooper.edu.