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Robin B. McDowell

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Environmental Studies

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rmcdowell@bates.edu

About

Ph.D. African and African American Studies – Harvard University
M.A. History – Harvard University
M.F.A. Design – University of Texas at Austin
B.A. Fine Art – University of Pennsylvania

Robin B. McDowell (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Affiliated Faculty of Africana Studies. Her work explores historical dimensions of environmental racism and visions for environmental justice for Black communities. Through narratives of south Louisiana wetlands, sugar plantations, oil fields, and salt mines, her work demonstrates how racial, environmental, and economic encounters in these spaces shaped conditions of Black life. Her first book project, Black Bayou: Race, Ecology, and the Transformation of Louisiana Wetlands, is a history of bonds between race and environment on a geologic time scale. Her transdisciplinary research methodology draws on archives, oral histories, earth sciences, graphic design, and multimedia art making.

Affiliations:

  • 听A workshop for developing, critiquing, and producing new projects in multimedia history at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
  • 听An educational, historical and research organization and museum that focuses on the struggles of Africans and African American people.
  • Black Louisiana History Incubators in the听, co-hosted by Johns Hopkins University and Michigan State University.
  • 听Taking root in the Midwestern region of St. Louis, professors and students cooperate with cultural producers, activists, attorneys and local politicians on community-led justice initiatives and historical research.

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Publications:

McDowell, Robin, 鈥溾�榃et and Unfit for Cultivation鈥�: Racial Fantasy, Environmental Control, and Viscous Archives of South Louisiana,鈥� Journal of American Studies / 頃滉淡鞎勲⿺毽勾頃欗殞 頃欖垹歆� 53 (3), December 31, 2025.

McDowell, Robin, 鈥淜now Your CCC鈥檚: The Crescent City Connection and The Chinese Cajun Cowboy.”听Southern Cultures听鈥淜atrina鈥檚 America鈥� Special Issue, October 2025.

McDowell, Robin, 鈥溾�楾here Are Lives Here:鈥� The African and African American Cemeteries of the Bonnet Carr茅 Spillway.鈥� in 鈥淭he Political Lives of Infrastructure,鈥澨�Radical History Review听147,听October 2023.

McDowell, Robin, 鈥淭he Plantation Imagination: Studies in Salt, Oil, and Sugar鈥� in 鈥渃ounter/cartographies鈥� Special Issue of听you are here: The Journal of Creative Geography,听October 2023.

 

Teaching:

  • ENVR205 Lives in Place: Inroduction to Environmental Humanities
  • ENVR234 FREE THE LAND: Histories of Environmental Racism in the U.S.
  • AFR/ENVR381 Black Geographies: Space, Place, and Ecologies of Power

Links