Save the date and please join us!

Environmental Studies 50^th Anniversary Symposium 

Keynote Address by Teona Williams ‘12 
“‘We’re Gonna Be Okay Now’: Lessons Learned from a Bowdoin  
Environmental Studies Alumna” 
Thursday, April 13, 2023 
7:30 p.m. 
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center 
 
Teona Williams is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University and will be Assistant Professor of Geography beginning in Fall 2024. Her work revolves around Black Geographies, 20th century African American and environmental history, and Black feminist theory. She completed her doctoral degree at Yale University in the Departments of African American Studies and History and a master’s degree in Environmental Justice at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. 
 
In 2018, she won the Clyde Woods Prize for best graduate paper in Black Geographies for her essay, "For ‘Peace, Quiet, and Respect’: Race, Policing, and Land Grabbing on Chicago’s South Side,” published by Antipode in March 2021. She is also the author of the essay, “Islands of Freedom: The Struggle to Desegregate Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain National Park 1936-1941,” in the forthcoming edited collection Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, Environmental History, which will be published in 2023. 

Before her current career as a scholar, Williams was an Environmental Studies-History coordinate major and Africana Studies minor at Bowdoin. In her keynote address, she will trace her journey to, through and beyond the college—from her home in Washington D.C. and her four years in Brunswick to her environmental justice activism in Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi—and explore how her work as a scholar, activist, and teacher is rooted in the liberal arts. She will also discuss her research on a cadre of rural Black feminists, including Fannie Lou Hamer and June Jordan, who articulated expansive visions of environmental justice that encompassed food sovereignty, disaster relief, universal basic income, radical land reform, and access to food and clean water. 

Alumni Panels 
Friday, April 14, 2023 
9:00 a.m.-3:45 p.m. 
Smith Auditorium, Sills Hall 
 
Meet & Greet  
Friday, April 14, 2023 
4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. 
Lantern, Roux Center for the Environment  
 
Exhibitions (see the webpage for details)