The GBH Forum Network is assisting with the production of this program. To attend online over Zoom webinar, please visit this link to register.

To attend in-person, please register at this link. Patrons who wish to attend online must still register.* *For in-person attendance, registration is encouraged, but due to the ample seating available in the Rabb Lecture Hall, walk-ins are also welcome. This program will happen both in-person in the Rabb Lecture Hall at the Central Library in Copley Square as well as online over Zoom webinar. Patrons who wish to purchase copies online may do so at Bookshop dot org. For in-person attendees, we'll then start an author signing facilitated by Posman Books. Garrett Dash Nelson, President & Head Curator of the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, will provide opening remarks.Īfter the conversation, there will be time for audience Q&A. The Zoom webinar component will conclude at 3 PM. Finney's book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (2014). Looking toward the future, she also highlights the work of African Americans who are opening doors to greater participation in environmental and conservation concerns.Storyteller, cultural geographer, and accidental environmentalist Carolyn Finney, PhD and Boston Public Library President David Leonard will discuss Dr. Drawing on a variety of sources from film, literature, and popular culture, and analyzing different historical moments, including the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Finney reveals the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America.

Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the 'great outdoors' and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces. Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans.

Black face white spaces