Dr. Hilda
E. Kurtz
Associate
Professor
Department
of Geography
Department
of Georgia
Email:
hkurtz@uga.edu
Tel
706 542 2329
RESEARCH
AREAS
Environmental justice
My research on
environmental justice (EJ) focuses on the practice of environmental justice
activism. I have examined
grassroots environmental justice activism through the lenses of a politics of
scale, contested ideals of citizenship, iconography, and gender and
performativity. My current research
in this area is an effort to theorize the inscription of environmental
injustice into particular state practices.
Politics of scale
Work on the politics
of scale highlights that geographical scale is neither static nor pre-given,
but is instead a social construction that shapes and is shaped by political and
economic processes. In my dissertation,
I developed a conceptual framework for analyzing specific practices that
constitute a politics of scale. I
currently am working to theorize the role of time and temporality in a politics
of scale.
Agrofood policy
My interest in agrofood
policy derives from several years of teaching an undergraduate course on the
Geography of Breakfast Commodities.
Synergizing teaching and research, I am currently investigating the
context in which small farmers in the
Community Food
Security
I am currently
examining parallels between the environmental justice movement and the
community food security movement, considering the ways in which a politics of
scale informs contested meanings of the each of these movements’ goals. Each movement articulates a contested
set of political and economic relationships between the local and the
larger-than-local, and even global scales, and in doing so encounters powerful
opposition both state and corporate actors. The goal of this project is to explore
whether these two movements have anything useful to learn from one another.
COURSES TAUGHT
GEOG 8305
Social Theory in Geography: Exploring Qualitative Research
A graduate research seminar that engages students with readings and
debate about the purpose, scope, and procedures of qualitative research,
especially as applied to human geography.
GEOG 6305/4305 Introduction to Qualitative
Research Methods
An introduction to
qualitative research problems in geography and to major modes of qualitative data
collection and analysis. In addition to gaining hands-on experience with data
collection and analysis, students will develop writing skills useful for the
representation of results of qualitative research. Data collection assignments include
observation, participant observation, interviews, and focus groups. Data analysis will center on examining a
multiply-sourced data base from multiple analytical perspectives. After taking this course, students
should be able to distinguish different types of qualitative research problems
and the research methods they suggest, and to understand the relationships
between successive stages of qualitative inquiry.
GEOG 8630 (with Dr. Steve
Holloway)
Seminar in Urban Geography: Race and Racialization
GEOG 8260
Environmental Geography: Geographic Perspectives on Environmental Justice
A graduate research seminar that explores how the
concept of environmental justice has been framed by academics, by environmental
justice movement activists, and by policy-makers. Students are encouraged to
think critically about the form and implications of competing arguments about
the nature of environmental injustice and inequity on one hand, and
environmental justice and equity on the other.
Geography of Breakfast Commodities
An
advanced undergraduate course designed to foster geographical thinking about how
land, labor, environmental and trade practices affect agricultural producers
and consumers in different regions of the world, and shape dynamic geographies
of food commodities. Substantive
foci include the history of production and global trade in coffee, sugar and
bananas, and recent debates over bio-technology and genetically modified
organisms.
GEOG 4660 The Industrial Agrofood System and Its Alternatives
Introduction to Urban Geography
Introduction to Human Geography
An introductory course
that introduces students to key concepts and sub-disciplines of human
geography.