Ryan B. Holifield
Assistant Professor
Office: Bolton 434
Phone: 414-229-4868
e-mail: holifiel@uwm.edu
Curriculum Vitae: pdf (227kb)
Mailing Address:
Professor Ryan Holifield
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
P.O. Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201
Education:
Ph.D., Geography, University of Minnesota, 2007
M.A., Geography, University of Georgia, 2001
A.B., English, Duke University, 1993
Courses Taught:
Geog 125: Introduction to Environmental Geography - Syllabus (660kb)
Geog 125: Introduction to Environmental Geography Online - Syllabus (645kb)
Geog 564: Urban Environmental Change and Social Justice - Syllabus (58kb)
Geog 870: Contemporary Geographic Approaches - Syllabus (96kb)
Office Hours:
10:00-12:00pm, also by appointment
Research Interests:
At the broadest level my research, which draws on critical geographic theory and the actor-network approach from science studies, addresses environmental justice in the United States. I have been particularly interested in the implementation of environmental justice programs in the US Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste sites. An earlier project examined the use of GIS-based environmental justice analyses by Superfund remedial project managers and community involvement coordinators in the southeastern US; another traced the negotiation and development of a customized human health risk assessment at a Superfund site on an American Indian reservation in the Upper Midwest. Both projects paid particular attention to how shifting projects of neoliberalization became articulated with administrative reforms to the Superfund program during the 1990s and 2000s. My current research investigates whether and how environmental justice issues have emerged, received attention, and in some cases disappeared at urban Areas of Concern and related hazardous waste sites in the Lake Michigan Basin.
Representative Publications:
Spaces of Environmental Justice. (with co-editors M. Porter and G. Walker). Antipode special issue and Antipode book series. Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2009/2010.
Actor-network theory as a critical approach to environmental justice: A case against synthesis with urban political ecology. Antipode 41 (4), forthcoming 2009.
Spaces of environmental justice: Frameworks for critical engagement. (with M. Porter and G. Walker) Antipode 41 (4), forthcoming 2009.
How to speak for aquifers and people at the same time: Environmental justice and counter-network formation at a hazardous waste site. Geoforum 40 (3): 363-372, 2009.
Regulatory science and risk assessment in Indian Country: Taking tribal publics into account. In Geographies of Science Vol. 3, Knowledge and Space, edited by Peter Meusburger, Heike Jöns, and David Livingstone. Springer Science & Business Media B.V., Dordrecht. Forthcoming, 2010.
Neoliberalism and environmental justice policy. In N. Heynen, J. McCarthy, S. Prudham, and P. Robbins, eds. Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences. London: Routledge, 2007.
Neoliberalism and environmental justice in the United States Environmental Protection Agency: Translating policy into managerial practice in hazardous waste remediation. Geoforum 35 (3): 285-297, 2004.
Defining environmental justice and environmental racism. Urban Geography 22 (1): 78-90, 2001.