Allison Puglisi

Allison Puglisi is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. She received a PhD in American Studies from Harvard University and a BA in History from Dartmouth College. She is a historian of Black social movements with an emphasis on gender and ecology. Her book in progress, Where We Reside: Black Environmental Thought in New Orleans, explores how housing activists—particularly Black women—laid the groundwork for a modern Black environmental tradition.

Publications:

• “‘The Mississippi River is a Part of You’: Race, Rights, and the Riparian.” American Quarterly 77(2). 2025

• “Tenants’ Rights and Ecology.” Housing and Environmental Justice Forum. Environmental History 30(3). 2025

• “Black Americans, Civil Rights, and the Roosevelts, 1932-1962,” Exhibition at Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, American Historical Review 129(2). 2024.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “‘The Mississippi River is A Part of You’: Race and Ecology on the Gulf Coast.” Invited talk, Science Center Faculty Seminar Series, Wellesley College, Nov. 20, 2024

• “Black Environmental Thought in New Orleans.” Invited talk, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, Dartmouth College, Feb. 15, 2024

Previous Organizations: 

• Vassar College (Assistant Professor of History)

• Brown University (Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellow)

Accomplishments:

• Short-Term Fellowship, Scholar-in-Residence Program, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

• Honorable Mention, Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize, American Studies Association

• Convivencia Grant, Faculty of Color Working Group

Upcoming Projects:

• Where We Reside: Black Environmental Thought in New Orleans (book in progress)

• Audre Lorde and the Political Uses of the (Feminist) Past (article in progress)

The people I write about are part of what many today call the "environmental justice movement": an environmentalism forged out of antiracism and class struggle.