Jul 25 2025

Regenerative Economies | BMI Summer Institute on Environmental Justice

Black Midwest Initiative Facilitator Talk Series

July 25, 2025

10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Location

Institute for the Humanities

Address

1007 W. Harrison Street, Suite 153, Chicago, IL 60607

Free and open to the public. Visit the Black Midwest Initiative website for more information.

10:00am | Presentation: “No Cold Storage: Idlewild’s Cooperative Economy” | lydia marie hicks, Black Eden Arts Alliance

lydia marie hicks is a feral artist raised by farmers and craftspeople whose practice interweaves storytelling, deep ecology, and process-based adaptive reuse. A product of the Great Migration and the Midwest, hicks seeks to forge connections across identity, origin, and probability patterns, often drawing on their background in zoology they blend social histories and natural histories to generate grandiose metaphors for reconnection or transmutation. Holding an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts and a BS in Zoology (+business, communications, francophone studies, and scuba diving) from Cal Poly Humboldt, hicks’s work spans film, installation, and site-responsive community projects.

 

11:15am | Presentation: “Lessons for Environmental Justice Advocates in Challenging Times” | David N. Pellow, University of California, Santa Barbara

David N. Pellow is the Dehlsen Chair and Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he teaches courses on social change movements, environmental justice, human-animal conflicts, sustainability, and social inequality. His books include: What is Critical Environmental Justice?; Total Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement; The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden; Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice; The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy; and Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago.

RSVP

Contact

The Black Midwest Initiative

Date posted

Jun 10, 2025

Date updated

Jun 10, 2025