Teaching Environmental Justice with Documentaries

Speakers:

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  Judith Shapiro

  Director of the Masters in Natural Resources and Sustainable DevelopmentSchool of International Service, American University

  Professor Shapiro’s research and teaching focus on global environmental politics and policy, the environmental politics of Asia, and Chinese politics under Mao. She is the author, co-author or editor of nine books, including China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet (Polity 2020). Her book Mao’s War against Nature inspired a documentary film, “Waking the Green Tiger” (2011). Her early experiences in China were made into a television feature film starring Melissa Gilbert.

  Dr. Shapiro earned her Ph.D. from American University’s School of International Service. She holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and another M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her B.A. from Princeton University is in Anthropology and East Asian Studies. Before coming to American University she had a lengthy career as an independent writer and commentator on Chinese politics. She also has extensive experience as a legal interpreter of Mandarin Chinese.

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  Jason Carbine

  C. Milo Connick Chair of Religious Studies, Associate ProfessorWhittier College

  Jason A. Carbine’s primary area of scholarly expertise is Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, with a research specialization in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and also with a comparative focus on parts of China. He has conducted field research in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, with an emphasis on ritual, practice, and religious spaces, and he has also led study abroad programs in various parts of Asia (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Southwest China). Overall, his teaching and research in the study of Buddhism and other Asian religions combines historical and ethnographic methodologies, and draws from an interdisciplinary body of research pertaining to the history of religions, textual studies, anthropology, comparative religious ethics, and environmental studies. He teaches a range of courses dealing with Asian religions from India to Japan, method and theory in the study of religion, Asian religion and society, globalization, and the environment.

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  Gary Marcuse

  Writer, Director, and ProducerFace to Face Media

  Gary Marcuse is the project director for the Global Environmental Justice Documentaries project. He is an award-winning writer, director, and producer for Face to Face Media, an independent production company based in Vancouver, Canada that specializes in the production of documentaries for public broadcast and documentary collections for use in class. He has produced a series of films on the rise of environmental movements in North America (Nuclear Dynamite, 2000), in Russia (ARKTIKA: The Russian Dream that Failed, 2004), and in China (Waking the Green Tiger: A green movement rises in China, 2011). These films received numerous international awards. His previous classroom resources include First Nations, The Circle Unbroken, a collection of films about contemporary life in indigenous communities in Canada produced in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, and Scanning Television, a collection of 100 videos and a curriculum guide for use in teaching media literacy in class. Each of these classroom resources was produced in collaboration with classroom teachers. He also holds a degree in environmental planning from Cornell University (1975) and he is a former programming executive for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the past president of the Documentary Organization of Canada.