A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Portrait of a white adult man standing outdoors

Alex Williams

Lecturer

Bio

Alex Williams (he/him) teaches sociology and urban ecology at SAIC and Roosevelt University. He earned his Bachelors in Audio Arts at Columbia College and his Masters in Sociology at Roosevelt University. As a teacher, Alex is interested in the social dimensions of health, wellness, and mental illness and how these realms relate to ecology and non-human nature. Outside of academia, Alex is a clinical and community herbalist and co-founder of First Curve Apothecary and Greenspell Organization, working with clients navigating complex chronic health conditions and mental health issues. As an herbalist, Alex also offers herbalism and foraging classes and apprenticeship.
 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Amid global environmental and political turmoil and local grassroots activism, we will traverse regenerative urban spaces with different organizational frameworks and ideas about what it means to be with others and what it means to include the non-human. This course explores these new modes of being, with fellow humans and among other species and things, in a changing world. The course is structured around critical readings, as well as community-based projects in North Lawndale.

This course generally meets at Homan Square 5-6 times a term.

Class Number

2029

Credits

3

Description

In this course, students will engage with theoretical and historical perspectives of environmental inequalities on a global and regional scale. The course examines community responses and policy solutions to environmental problems, particularly at the intersection of environmental quality and public health and race, gender, and class inequities. We also discuss environmentalism amid colonial and capitalist power structures. Southeast Chicago and Little Village, two Chicago communities with rich histories of environmental activism, serve as local case studies. The readings for this course include works from Rachel Stein, who writes on environmental activism and gender; Anna Tsing, an anthropologist concerned with human/nature interactions at the edges of global capitalism; Robert Brulle, a scholar/activist writing on current environmental movements; Kyle Whyte, who writes from an indigenous perspective on the relationships of indigenous peoples and climate activism. We will also review policy papers from the National Resource Defense Council and other advocacy groups. Course work includes weekly reading responses and a final project that brings together knowledge and action on environmental justice, either through a strategy paper or an artistic project.

This course generally meets at Homan Square 5-6 times a term.

Class Number

1738

Credits

3