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Melissa Checker

Urban Studies
Phone: 718-997-5130
Email: melissa.checker@qc.cuny.edu

Dr. Checker received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology in 2002 from New York University. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of specialization include environmental racism, environmental and climate justice activism, and the human rights implications of carbon trading. More generally, she specializes in anthropology of the United States, environmental movements and race, class and ethnicity.

Checker's most recent book, Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (NYU Press, 2005) won the 2007 Society for Humanistic Anthropology's Book Award. Using ethnographic research, this book tells the story of the tenacious activism of an African-American neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia, in fighting the envirionmental degradation of their community. Checker also co-edited (with Maggie Fishman) Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life (Columbia U Press, 2004), which presents ten studies of activist groups across the country. In addition, she has published a number of articles in academic journals as well as in print and online magazines and newspapers.

Checker is currently /American Anthropologist/'s Editor for Public Anthropology Reviews, and the adviser for the Queens College Urban Studies Club. She teaches Urban Poverty and Affluence, as well as courses on Urban Environments and environmentalism, Contemporary Urban Theory, and Fieldwork in Urban Studies.


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Kent Boklan

Melissa Checker

Julie George

Murphy Halliburton

Ray "Skip" Johnson

Justin Storbeck

Amy Wan


 

 

 

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