Here's a look at the featured books and authors from Author Festival 2021.
Struggles for Climate Justice by
This book provides an accessible but intellectually rigorous introduction to the global social movement for 'climate justice' and addresses the socially uneven consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Deploying relational understandings of nature-society, space, and power, Brandon Derman shows that climate change has been co-produced with social inequality. Mismatching levels of responsibility and vulnerability, and institutions that emerged in tandem with those disproportionalities compose the terrain on which NGOs and social movements now contest climate injustice in a wide-ranging "politics of connection." Case-based chapters explore the defining commitments of affected and allied communities, and how they have shaped specific struggles mobilizing human rights, international treaties, transnational activist forums, national and local constituencies, and broad-based demonstrations. Derman synthesizes these cases and similar efforts across the globe to identify and explore crosscutting themes in climate justice politics as well as the opportunities and dilemmas facing advocates and activists, and those who would ally with them going forward. How should we understand campaigns for climate justice? What do these initiatives share, and what differentiates them? What, in fact, does "climate justice" mean in these contexts? And what do the framing and progression of such efforts in different settings suggest about the broader conditions that produce and sustain climate injustice, how those conditions could be unmade, and what might take their place? Struggles for Climate Justice approaches these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective accessible to graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as scholars of geography, social movements, environmental politics, policy, and socio-legal studies.
Here's a look at the featured books and authors from Author Festival 2021.
Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies
Brandon Derman holds a PhD in geography with additional concentration in socio-legal studies from the University of Washington, an MA in geography from Hunter College of the City University of New York, and a BA from the University of Michigan.
Brandon’s interests center on the production, regulation, and contestation of environmental marginality at scales from the globe to the neighborhood. At UIS he has designed and taught courses in environmental and natural resource policy and law, cultural geography, research methods, climate change, and climate justice.
Brandon’s scholarship has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the European Union Centers of Excellence, and appeared in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Climate Policy, and the South African Review of Human Rights among other venues. He has presented and organized sessions at national and international conferences, and served as a member of the Scientific Committee for the first World Forum on Climate Justice, at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2019.
The Communism of Love by
Exploring the meanings and powers of love from ancient Greece to the present day, Richard Gilman-Opalsky argues that what is called "love" by the best thinkers who have approached the subject is in fact the beating heart of communism--understood as a way of living, not as a form of government. Along the way, he reveals with clarity that the capitalist way of assigning value to things is incapable of appreciating what humans value most. Capitalism cannot value the experiencesand relationships that make our lives worth living and can only destroy love by turning it into a commodity.The Communism of Love follows the struggles of love in different contexts of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and shows how the aspiration for love is as close as we may get to a universal communist aspiration.
Professor, Political Theory and Philosophy
Department of Political Science
Richard Gilman-Opalsky earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at The New School for Social Research in 2006. His M.A. from The New School for Social Research and B.A. from Hofstra University are in Philosophy. Dr. Gilman-Opalsky’s teaching and research focuses on the history of political philosophy, Continental and contemporary social theory, Marxism, capitalism, postmodern philosophy, critical theory, social movements and the public sphere. At UIS, he has designed and taught courses including Political Ideas and Ideologies, Democratization and the Public Sphere, and Globalization and the Future of Democracy. He has published a prolific record of scholarship with major university and commercial presses, and his work has been widely reviewed in professional journals and activist circles around the world.
Dr. Gilman-Opalsky is author of six books with the latest titles - The Communism of Love: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value (2020) and Riotous Epistemology: Imaginary Power, Art, and Insurrection (2019) joining his other publications. He is co-editor of Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century: A Reader of Radical Undercurrents (2018), and has published numerous articles on social theory and political philosophy, especially on theories of revolution, contentious politics, philosophy of praxis, and capitalism and its culture. Dr. Gilman-Opalsky has lectured on his research throughout the U.S. and Europe, as well as China and Argentina.
Dr. Gilman-Opalsky was named University Scholar 2018-2019.
Tax Increment Financing and Economic Development by University Distinguished Professor of Public Administration
Director, Institute for Illinois Public Finance
Kenneth A. Kriz, earned his Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Indiana University, an M.P.A from University of Colorado-Denver, and his B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Iowa. His research focuses on subnational debt policy and administration, public pension fund management, government financial risk management, economic and revenue forecasting, and behavioral public finance. He is a frequent presenter nationally and internationally at conferences on public economics, public budgeting and financial management. He has published more than 40 journal articles and book chapters, as well as a textbook on quantitative research methods in public administration, and has experience consulting with public and nonprofit organizations on financial and economic matters.
Dr. Kriz served as Vice-Chairperson of the City of Omaha, Nebraska Civilian Employees Retirement System from 2006 to 2011 and on the Board of Trustees of the Wichita, Kansas Police & Fire Retirement System and on the Joint Investment Committee for the city’s pension funds from 2014 to 2018. Dr. Kriz was a Fulbright Scholar in the Republic of Estonia during academic year 2004-05 and a Fulbright Senior Specialist in the Czech Republic in 2008.
Educational Psychology by
A comprehensive introduction to educational psychology, this volume is inclusive of all of the essentials--covering history, profiles, theories, applications, research, case studies, current events, issues, controversies, and more. Focused on human learning and teaching, the field of educational psychology informs a range of educational challenges, including instructional design, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education, student motivation, and classroom management. In this book, two veteran professors in the fields of education and psychology, offer a clear and concise yet comprehensive overview of this growing specialty. This volume will be valuable not only to university students aiming to understand psychology's subfields and to choose a major or a specialty, but also to classroom teachers, school administrators, and school social workers aiming to make teaching more effective and learning more thorough and lasting. Topics include the field's history, primary figures theories, research, theories, applications, issues, and controversies. Authors Martin and Torok-Gerard also explain current issues of social justice and educational equity, citing means that have been used to meet those goals in schools. The text additionally analyzes special education as a civil rights issue as well as equity and fairness for LGBTQ+ students in the context of social justice. The text ends with emerging research and predictions for the future of educational psychology. Presents case studies that survey current social justice and educational equity issues Includes a historical timeline that allows readers to understand how issues have developed over time Offers a glossary of key terms that provides context for deeper understanding Provides a resource list so readers can investigate issues on their own Features a bibliography of citable resources that serves as a foundation for further research
Assistant Professor, Teacher Education
Jennifer L. Martin earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Oakland University, her M.A.L.S. and her M.A. in English from Eastern Michigan University, and a B.A. from University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Dr. Martin’s teaching and research focuses on culturally responsive teaching and leading, curriculum theory/critical theory, educational equity and multicultural education, English education and literacy, service-learning, and urban education. At UIS, she has designed and taught courses including Managing the Diverse Classroom, Middle Level and High School Clinical Practice Seminar, and English Methods for Middle and Secondary Levels. She has a prolific record of scholarship with major research journals, and her work has been widely reviewed and cited. Dr. Martin also shares her work on the podcast eduCATE: Caring Activist Teachers for Equity.
In 2016, she was the recipient of the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Outstanding Book Recognition Award for Racial Battle Fatigue: Insights from the front lines of social justice advocacy.