{"id":127584,"date":"2019-10-11T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=127584"},"modified":"2019-10-11T12:51:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T16:51:31","slug":"jane-costlow-professor-activist-in-solidarity-with-other-people-who-really-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/10\/11\/jane-costlow-professor-activist-in-solidarity-with-other-people-who-really-care\/","title":{"rendered":"My Last Year: Jane Costlow, a professor-activist \u2018in solidarity with others who really care\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a professor in her 34th and final year on the Bates faculty, a teachable moment can occur almost any time, even during a visit to a Trader Joe\u2019s in downtown Portland, Maine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>After joining last month\u2019s Global Climate Strike on the steps of City Hall, and then eating pizza with the large Bates contingent at nearby Lincoln Park, Jane Costlow and her fellow travelers \u2014 three first-year students she\u2019d met that morning, plus a photographer \u2014 headed back to her Toyota Prius.<\/span><\/p>\n

Costlow’s Final Year <\/strong><\/p>\n

Join us as we follow Jane Costlow<\/a> \u2014 esteemed Bates teacher, scholar, and colleague \u2014 month by month during her 34th and final academic year.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

As the group\u2019s conversation transitioned from climate disaster to more routine matters, Costlow acquiesced to the students\u2019 unsubtle hints about stopping at the local Trader Joe\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A trip to a Trader Joe’s store in Portland became a teachable moment for the three young students who accompanied Jane Costlow to the Climate Strike in Portland on Sept. 20. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

It was Costlow’s first visit to the grocery chain famed for its house-brand products, among other things, and it took her back to the 1980s. As a newly appointed Russian professor, she began leading students to the former Soviet Union during Short Term, accompanying them on excursions to buy food in cities like Leningrad, Odessa, or Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cUncannily Soviet,\u201d she declared after entering Trader Joe’s. \u201cNot as many flashy colors\u201d as a typical large supermarket, \u201cand sort of subdued \u2014 except, obviously, there\u2019s a lot more food here.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Costlow, the two events, a climate protest<\/a> followed by shopping for crackers and chocolate, raised questions that she really wanted to pose to her young passengers.<\/p>\n

\"With<\/a>

With the student bus at Bates nearing capacity, Costlow waits to see if she needs to drive students to the Climate Strike. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cYou go to a rally, trying to raise your voices about this extraordinarily challenging, difficult, and looming crisis. And then you do this kind of mundane 21st-century American thing of going to a national grocery chain, where there’s lots of food that’s brought in from all parts of the world, and packaged for us with more packaging than there needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not knowing the three students, she figured a rant wasn\u2019t the right approach. \u201cI didn’t want to come across as this sourpuss who was raining on their parade.\u201d Instead, she simply engaged them in conversation.<\/p>\n

Such as: \u201cDo you think about what shopping at Trader Joe\u2019s means in terms of supporting local merchants or local agriculture?\u201d When people have raved to Costlow about Trader Joe’s, she\u2019s responded that part of the reason she\u2019s never patronized the chain is her desire to support local agriculture and merchants.<\/p>\n

The conversation flowed naturally and allowed her to suggest places near Bates that the students could visit, such as Lewiston\u2019s Farmers Market at the Bates Mill complex. Although the students don\u2019t have cars, \u201cthey might have to walk, which would also be good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"As<\/a>

As she engaged her passengers about sustainability, \u201cI didn’t want to come across as this sourpuss,” says Costlow. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Joining the Climate Strike allowed Costlow, once a Russian professor and now the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, to reflect on her responsibility, as a professor-activist, to her students, to teaching, to research, and to the world.<\/p>\n

And on another level, she was just happy to join the protest. \u201cAmid all of the frustrations around this issue, it did feel wonderful to be in solidarity with other people who really care about it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I do profoundly believe that there are moments when putting your body on the street, even at a really safe rally, in some ways makes a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costlow is proud of the Bates students, several of whom she knows well, who organized the big Bates turnout at the Portland event. \u201cThey’re trying to juggle lots of different responsibilities and coursework. They’re trying to figure out the logistics of how you get buses, how you organize people, how to get them signed up, even how to get pizza delivered for lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Costlow<\/a>

Costlow connects with philosophy major Jasper Beardslee ’22 (left) of Miami and geology major Essie Martin ’21 of Newcastle, Maine, at the Sept. 20 climate rally. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Costlow knows of what she speaks. As a graduate student in the 1980s, the era of peak protest against nuclear weapons, she worked with community groups to organize trains from New Haven to New York City for a huge rally. \u201cIt\u2019s the nitty-gritty of organizing and communicating \u2014 those are fabulous experiences our students are getting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Appointed as a Bates professor of Russian in 1986, Costlow began to explore environmental topics in the 1990s. For example, an early course on country life in Russia examined how ideas about nature have permeated the Russian psyche.<\/p>\n

In 1998, she joined the college\u2019s nascent Program in Environmental Studies, and in 2012 she was appointed to the Griffith chair; at the time, Carl Straub, her predecessor as the Griffith professor, praised the \u201cmomentum in Jane\u2019s academic and scholarly journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>

At the Sept. 20 Climate Strike in Portland, Costlow responds to a speaker with Sue Inches, who led the Short Term practitioner-taught course “Advocating for Sustainability” last spring at Bates. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Just as her academic focus has changed, so too have the global issues at stake. Back then it was the Cold War; today it\u2019s climate change.<\/p>\n

And while Costlow is no stranger to the teaching the topic, she says there\u2019s still a \u201chuge dilemma in how to communicate about climate change. Everybody gets why this is so important. But how do we communicate the urgency? How do you get people engaged? What policies are you promoting in your communication?\u201d<\/p>\n

She points to a pivotal class discussion this semester in her course \u201cLives in Place,\u201d which explores ideas about place and sustainable living.<\/p>\n

Talking about the impact of visual images on political movements, be it climate change or immigration, a student wondered if the proliferation of heartbreaking images, such as ones of emaciated polar bears, can really influence policy.<\/p>\n

\n

Jane Costlow shares her thoughts on the power of protest. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n