Teona Williams

Teona Williams is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography. Her work revolves around Black Geographies, 20th century African American and environmental history, and Black feminist theory. Her current work explores the role of disaster and hunger, in shaping Black feminist ecologies from 1930-1990s. Specifically, she follows a cadre of rural Black feminists who articulated visions of food sovereignty, overhauled antiblack disaster relief, and vigorously fought for universal basic income, radical land reform, and food and clean water access as a human right. Prior to Rutgers, she received her doctoral degree at Yale University in the departments of African American Studies and History. She also completed a master's degree in environmental justice at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. In 2017, she won the Clyde Woods Prize for best graduate paper in Black Geographies, for her paper "Build A Wall Around Hyde Park:" Race, Space and Policing on the Southside of Chicago 1950-2010, published by The Antipode in March 2020. She is the author of the essay “Islands of Freedom: The struggle to desegregate Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain National Park 1936-1941” in the forthcoming edited collection Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, Environmental History which will be released in 2024.

Publications:

• Teona Williams, “‘Build A Wall Around Hyde Park’: A Political Ecology of Police Brutality on the Southside of Chicago,” Antipode, March 2021 Winner of the 2018 Clyde Woods Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper in Black Geographies.

• Teona Williams, “Rethinking Black Food Culture with Black Food Matters and Black Geographies,” Antipode October 1, 2020.

• Teona Williams, “Police Violence and Environmental Justice,” Op-ed, Black Perspectives, 2020

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “Roundtable: New Perspectives in Black Ecology,” American Society for Environmental Historians (ASEH) 2020, Virtual

• “Towards Critical Environmental Justice and Abolition Ecology in Environmental History,” ASEH 2020, Vancouver, Canada, (Postponed due to COVID-19)

• “Black Feminist Interventions on the Environmental Humanities,” The American Studies Association Conference 2019, Honolulu, HI

Previous Organizations: 

• Yale University

• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Accomplishments:

• Ford Dissertation Fellowship

• Center for Engaged Scholarship Fellowship

• American Society for Environmental Historians Diversity Fellowship

Upcoming Projects:

• Teona Williams, “'Islands of Freedom’: The Desegregation of Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks,” in Mary Mendoza, ed., Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice and Environmental History (under contract with Kansas University Press)

The Black Ecologies Signature Lab at the ISGRJ draws together threads in order to generate scholarship, artistry, and other resources that aid in infusing public and scholarly discourse as well as our broader cultural imaginaries with the insights generated through the analytical insights, methods, and theories related to Black Ecologies and its closely allied fields, including Black Geographies. The lab provides a suite of digital projects, speaker series and workshops, community engagement events, teaching and undergraduate program development, and publications to foment Rutgers as a major center for Black ecological studies for faculty, students, and community. 

https://globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/Black_Ecologies