{"id":7313,"date":"2025-07-01T04:08:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T08:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/profile\/robin-b-mcdowell\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T12:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T17:28:09","slug":"robin-b-mcdowell","status":"publish","type":"faculty-profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/profile\/robin-b-mcdowell\/","title":{"rendered":"Robin B. McDowell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Ph.D. African and African American Studies &#8211; Harvard University<br \/>\nM.A. History &#8211; Harvard University<br \/>\nM.F.A. Design &#8211; University of Texas at Austin<br \/>\n<\/b><b>B.A. Fine Art &#8211; University of Pennsylvania<br \/>\n<\/b><\/p>\n<p>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, <i>Black Bayou: Race, Ecology, and the Transformation of Louisiana Wetlands<\/i>, 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.<br \/>\n<b><br \/>\nAffiliations:<br \/>\n<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.historydesignstudio.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?hl=en&amp;q=https:\/\/www.historydesignstudio.org\/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1756313898589000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1-ztUstWmRIW7UkT9lqGDd\">History Design Studio<\/a>\u00a0A workshop for developing, critiquing, and producing new projects in multimedia history at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lmaah.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?hl=en&amp;q=https:\/\/www.lmaah.com\/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1756313898589000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1vty2pksGWNztdMq8KdCjP\">The Louisiana Museum of African American History<\/a>\u00a0An educational, historical and research organization and museum that focuses on the struggles of Africans and African American people.<\/li>\n<li>Black Louisiana History Incubators in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dslprojects.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?hl=en&amp;q=https:\/\/www.dslprojects.org\/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1756313898589000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2I-7SQ4hHkpW8NkAVdw6VI\">Diaspora Solidarities Lab<\/a>, co-hosted by Johns Hopkins University and Michigan State University.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/warrencenter.fas.harvard.edu\/commonwealth-project\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?hl=en&amp;q=https:\/\/warrencenter.fas.harvard.edu\/commonwealth-project&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1756313898589000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1NySXRIOSd8Yt86S5VAKCd\">The Commonwealth Project<\/a>\u00a0Taking 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>Publications:<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>McDowell, Robin, \u201c\u2018Wet and Unfit for Cultivation\u2019: Racial Fantasy, Environmental Control, and Viscous Archives of South Louisiana,\u201d <em>Journal of American Studies<\/em> <em>\/ \ud55c\uad6d\uc544\uba54\ub9ac\uce74\ud559\ud68c \ud559\uc220\uc9c0<\/em> 53 (3), December 31, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>McDowell, Robin, \u201cKnow Your CCC\u2019s: The Crescent City Connection and The Chinese Cajun Cowboy.&#8221;\u00a0<i>Southern Cultures\u00a0<\/i>\u201cKatrina\u2019s America\u201d Special Issue, October 2025.<\/p>\n<p>McDowell, Robin, \u201c\u2018There Are Lives Here:\u2019 The African and African American Cemeteries of the Bonnet Carr\u00e9 Spillway.\u201d in \u201cThe Political Lives of Infrastructure,\u201d\u00a0<i>Radical History Review\u00a0<\/i>147<i>,\u00a0<\/i>October 2023.<\/p>\n<p>McDowell, Robin, \u201cThe Plantation Imagination: Studies in Salt, Oil, and Sugar\u201d in \u201ccounter\/cartographies\u201d Special Issue of\u00a0<i>you are here: The Journal of Creative Geography,\u00a0<\/i>October 2023<i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Teaching:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ENVR205<\/strong> Lives in Place: Inroduction to Environmental Humanities<\/li>\n<li><strong>ENVR234<\/strong> FREE THE LAND: Histories of Environmental Racism in the U.S.<\/li>\n<li><strong>AFR\/ENVR381<\/strong> Black Geographies: Space, Place, and Ecologies of Power<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":1889,"featured_media":7464,"template":"","class_list":["post-7313","faculty-profile","type-faculty-profile","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/7313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/faculty-profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/7313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7885,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/7313\/revisions\/7885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}