This talk is drawn from Sze’s current book project which examines flows, fears and fantasies in contemporary urban and global environmental culture, with a sustained look at Shanghai in China. She focuses here on Dongtan, a failed eco-city proposal, framing it within multiple ideological and spatial contexts.

Julie Sze is an Associate Professor of American Studies at UC Davis. She is also the founding director of the Environmental Justice Project for UC Davis’ John Muir Institute for the Environment. and in that capacity is the Faculty Advisor for 25 Stories from the Central Valley.

Sze’s book, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, won the 2008 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, awarded annually to the best published book in American Studies.

Sze’s research investigates environmental justice and environmental inequality; culture and environment; race, gender and power; and community health and activism. She has published on a wide range of topics such as energy and air pollution activism; toxicity; the cultural politics of the Hummer, and on environmental justice novels and cultural production.

Sze has been interviewed widely in print and on the radio: World’s Fair, MELDI, Newsweek, Asian Reporter, and Grist Magazine.
The Urban Studies is a research cluster of the Institute for Humanities Research, which has provided staff support for this event.  Sponsored by the UC Humanities Network.