Researcher ORCID Identifier
Graduation Year
2023
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Analysis
Reader 1
Guillermo Douglass-Jaimes
Reader 2
Marc Los Huertos
Reader 3
Char Miller
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2022 Christina Marsh
Abstract
Breakwaters are more than just physical structures that protect against storm surges and in the context of Long Beach, CA, my hometown, they are actualizations of economic, social, environmental, geologic, and policy challenges. Inspired by Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy, and Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks, I use an extended metaphor and autoethnographic approach to connect a chronology of my educational life to the physical structure of a breakwater. Where the breakwater also acts as a signifier of my personal experiences of seeing it, questioning its purpose, and not always finding an answer. This paper explores my lived and learned experiences as a Black woman in the geosciences as it relates to greater needs for diversity and educational changes to be implemented in the geoscience community broadly. Paralleling the breakwater and the systemic racism and violence ingrained in geology, I explore the intersections of elementary geoscience curriculum, Black theory, place-based narratives, and physical geography to pose questions around the reformation or more so the reinvention of geoscience as a tool for empowerment and change.
Recommended Citation
Marsh, Christina, "Breakwater: Anti-Blackness in Geoscience Lessons from Long Beach, CA" (2023). Pomona Senior Theses. 271.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/271
Included in
Africana Studies Commons, Earth Sciences Commons, Environmental Education Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Social Justice Commons
