Professor Marisa Solomon Explores the Correlation Between Proximity to Waste and Fugitive Gender Articulations in Recent Research Publication

On October 1, 2022, Marisa Solomon, co-director of the Black Atlantic Ecologies working group and assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies, shared her recent scholarly work in GLQ (A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies). Entitled "Ecologies Elsewhere: Flyness, Fill, and Black Women's Fugitive Matter(s)," the article delves beyond conventional environmental perspectives, focusing on spaces where existence is intricately tied to waste in various forms.

Emerging from a broader investigation into the anti-Black geographies of "long-distance" waste management, Solomon argues that waste infrastructure upholds the value of white properties while simultaneously creating marginalized spaces of Black dispossession. Through her analysis, she contends that acts such as stealing, salvaging, narrating, and laboring with waste serve as critiques of how property organizes the world. These practices, she posits, are ecological strategies developed outside conventional frameworks.