Ashley Dawson is professor of postcolonial studies in the English department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. His latest books include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). A member of the Social Text Collective and the founder of the CUNY Climate Action Lab, he is a long-time climate justice activist.
Business as usual is no longer an option when it comes to carbon emissions. At a press conference following the release of the IPCC’s “Doomsday” report, panel chair Hoesung Lee commented that “limiting warming to 1.5 is not impossible, but … Continue reading “Academia and Climate Change”
ST PODCAST: Web editor Ashley Dawson sits down with former Social Text editor Andrew Ross to discuss his newest book, Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal (OR Books, 2014).
The Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at The Graduate Center at CUNY hosts: BDS AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM: A Panel Discussion With Bill Mullen (Purdue), Radhika Sainath (Palestine Solidarity Legal Support), Sherry Wolf (International Socialists Review), ST Collective Member and Web … Continue reading “BDS and Academic Freedom”
The Social Text Collective strongly opposes New York State Assembly Bill 8392. This pending legislation would prohibit colleges and universities in New York State from using state funding to support employees’ participation in academic groups or associations that have passed … Continue reading “Social Text Condemns New York State Assembly's Attack on Free Speech”
Social Text Web Editor Ashley Dawson discusses his research and activism as part of the Just Publics @365 podcast series.
Click here to read. On the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, Social Text is pleased to debut “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” a collection of original essays on horizontalism in theory and practice. Written and edited by faculty and graduate … Continue reading “Social Text Periscope on OWS”
Survival is our politics now. So says French political anthropologist Marc Abélès in The Politics of Survival. And so say many cultural producers today, although this admission often comes by way of what cultural theorist Fredric Jameson called the political … Continue reading “Staying Alive”
The Occupy Movement has revived May Day. For far too many years, this holiday, which was of course also a solidarity-building occasion, has been ignored by the US labor movement.
Italy was really great, but it’s so good to be back in NYC! Today I walked through Union Square, which is filled with tables distributing information for Occupy May Day. There’s a very exciting series of events planned, as well … Continue reading “Back to the Big Apple”
In this interview, Christian Parenti and Mike Menser discuss issues raised by Parenti’s recently published book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. The Geography of Catastrophic Convergence MM: Kenya, Uganda and East Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, … Continue reading “Tropic of Chaos: Christian Parenti Interviewed”
Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor was published this spring by Harvard University Press. Nixon’s work has been crucial to articulating the conjunction — as well as the fault lines — between postcolonial studies and ecocriticism. … Continue reading “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor: An Interview with Rob Nixon”
Last night I went to see the film The Last Mountain, an incredibly powerful documentary that chronicles the struggle of West Virginian communities against the pulverization of their land and lives by coal mining outfits like Massey Energy Corporation. Mountaintop … Continue reading “Act for Climate Justice”
The news today carried tidings of another huge setback for working people in the US. The legislature in New Jersey, one of the most heavily Democratic and pro-union states in the country, has passed a bill rolling back benefits such … Continue reading “Age of Austerity”
Under Review: Marc Abélès, The Politics of Survival (Duke University Press, 2010) Kolya Abramsky, Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World(AK Press, 2010) Slavoj Zizek, Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010) Writing about Hollywood disaster … Continue reading “Insecure Times”
The ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant intensified today, with worrying news emerging of radioactive iodine in Tokyo’s water supply. The entire infrastructure of one of the world’s most modern and cohesive societies seems to be threatened … Continue reading “Nuclear Power/Knowledge”
