Environmental Justice HistoryLab Releases Documentary Film Sequel on Legacies of the 1970 ENACT Teach-In (August 1970)

On August 19, 2020, the Environmental Justice HistoryLab released a 32-minute documentary film, Environmental Action for Survival: Celebrating the Organizers of the 1970 Teach-In on the Environment and 50 Years of Environmental Activism

Researched and produced by Matthew Woodbury, this documentary is a sequel to The ENACT Teach-In of 1970 and is based on interviews conducted with seven of the organizers of the ENACT Teach-In on the Environment during the 50th anniversary commemoration held in March 2020.  Watch the new documentary on our YouTube channel here and learn more about the project here.

Featuring Barbara Reid Alexander, David Allan, George Coling, Elizabeth Grant Kingwill, Arthur Hanson, John Russell, and Doug Scott.

WEMU 89.1 Features EJ HistoryLab Website and ENACT Panel in “Earth Day at 50” Series (April 2020)

WEMU, the NPR station based at Eastern Michigan University, extensively featured the ENACT panel discussion, Ecology Center history project, and other research of the Environmental Justice HistoryLab in a two-part series in its “Issues of the Environment” program.

Click here to read and listen to Part 1: Earth Day Celebrates 50 Years! Origins in Ann Arbor

Click here to read and listen to Part 2: Earth Day Celebrates 50 Years: Looking Ahead during COVID-19

Earth Day 1970 Research by Environmental Justice HistoryLab Featured in Washington Post, “What the Older Generations Owe the Young” (April 2020)

Matt Lassiter, the founder of the Environmental Justice HistoryLab, published “What the Older Generations Owe the Young 50 Years after the First Earth Day” in the Washington Post on April 22, 2020. The article for the “Made by History” project draws from the research and interviews conducted by the student team that created the “Give Earth a Chance” digital exhibit.

Adam Rome of the University of Buffalo wrote a companion piece for the “Made by History” in the Washington Post, “Earth Day 1970 Was More than a Protest. It Built a Movement.”

Environmental Justice HistoryLab Releases Documentary Film on 1970 ENACT Teach-In (April 2020)

On April 17, 2020, the Environmental Justice HistoryLab released a 22-minute documentary film, The Environmental Action for Survival (ENACT) Teach-In of 1970.  Dr. Matthew Woodbury led the production team of eight undergraduates who created the documentary during the Winter 2020 semester in the course “Historical Filmmaking: Environmental Activism at U-M.”  The undergraduate filmmakers are Erin Arsenault, Rachael Fotis, Seeta Goyal, Jake Hutnik, Vikram Mohan, Kevin Rubba, Jana Shemano, and Preston Vanalstine.

Watch The Environmental Action for Survival (ENACT) Teach-In of 1970 on the Environmental Justice HistoryLab’s YouTube channel here.

Learn more about the production team and the History course that created this documentary here.

Environmental Justice HistoryLab Members Discuss Environmental Sustainability for “Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out” (April 2020)

Five current and former members of the Environmental Justice HistoryLab (Basil Alsubee, Meghan Clark, Hannah Thoms, Matt Lassiter, Matthew Woodbury) contributed to this short video, “What Does Sustainability Mean to You?” as part of the University of Michigan’s “Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out” online program.

Three former leaders of Environmental Action for Survival, the student group that organized the U-M Teach-In on the Environment in March 1970, also contributed (David Allan, Arthur Hanson, Elizabeth Kingwill).

The overriding theme is that environmental sustainability = environmental justice.  Watch the “What Does Sustainability Mean to You?” video here.

Environmental Justice HistoryLab Contributes History Segment of “Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out” on Coursera (April 2020)

Between April 6-20, 2020, the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan is launching the “Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out” on Coursera and Futurelearn.  The Environmental Justice HistoryLab worked closely with the “Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out” planners on the historical components of this free and public online educational program.

Professor Matt Lassiter, the faculty coordinator of the Environmental Justice HistoryLab, helped create the modules on the history of the U-M Teach-In on the Environment and the broader Earth Day movement in 1970 and the emphasis on the deep historical roots of campaigns for environmental justice and sustainability.  Matthew Woodbury, the 2019-2020 project supervisor for the Environmental Justice HistoryLab, also contributed extensively to the planning and worked with undergraduate students in a Winter 2020 course on Historical Filmmaking to produce a documentary about the Environmental Action for Survival Teach-In of 1970.

Below, Matt Lassiter talks about the origins of Earth Day 1970 and the role of the ENACT Teach-In on the Environment at the University of Michigan in a segment from the “Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out.”

Matt Lassiter Publishes Essay in Washington Post on the 1970 U-M Teach-In on the Environment (March 11, 2020)

Matt Lassiter, the director of the Environmental Justice HistoryLab, has published an essay on the history and legacies of ENACT’s 1970 Teach-In on the Environment in the Washington Post‘s “Made by History” section on March 11, 2020, the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the four-day U-M teach-in.  Read the article here.

The essay, subtitled “the forgotten environmental action that pointed the way forward for the left,” emphasizes the legacies of environmental sustainability and justice and includes quotations from five of the former Environmental Action for Survival leaders and Earth Day 1970 organizers who have returned to U-M campus for two panel discussions on the Teach-In on the Environment and campus activism.

Lassiter’s article draws from the archival research and interviews conducted by the eight undergraduate students who created the “Give Earth a Chance: Environmental Activism in Michigan” exhibit published January 2018.  This is a prominent example of Why Environmental History Matters and of the power of faculty-student research collaborations that utilize digital and multimedia platforms for public impact, the mission of the U-M HistoryLabs program.

Michigan Today Creates Slide Show from “Give Earth a Chance” (Feb. 2020)

Michigan Today, a publication of the University of Michigan, has created a slide show drawn from the research materials in the “Give Earth a Chance: Environmental Activism in Michigan” exhibit, as a preview for the “Earth Day at 50: Rise to the Challenge” commemoration of the 1970 Teach-In on the Environment.  The Environmental Justice HistoryLab is partnering with the Ecology Center to produce two panel discussions for the commemorative week on March 11, 1970, co-sponsored by the School for Environment and Sustainability.

View the Michigan Today slide show here.

Meghan Clark and Hannah Thoms Publish Chapter in the Book: Teaching Undergraduates with Archives (Dec. 2019)

Meghan Clark and Hannah Thoms, two members of the undergraduate student team that created the “Give Earth a Chance: Environmental Activism in Michigan” exhibit, have published a chapter about their experiences in Teaching Undergraduates with Archives (Michigan Publishing, 2019).  The chapter, “Give Earth a Chance: History Undergraduates and Environmental Activism in the Archives,” is coauthored with Professor Matt Lassiter, the project director.  The chapter is an expanded version of a panel presentation by the three coauthors at the “Teaching Undergraduates with Archives” symposium held at the Bentley Historical Library in November 2018, where Clark and Thoms were the only undergraduates on the conference program.

Read the “Give Earth a Chance: History Undergraduates and Environmental Activism in the Archives” chapter here.

Read all of Teaching Undergraduates with Archives, coedited by Nancy Bartlett, Elizabeth Gadelha, and Cinda Nofziger, at this link.  The anthology is open-source with free digital downloads.

From the Bentley Historical Library: “This work reflects a shift at the Bentley and beyond to develop new approaches to engaging undergraduates in research with primary sources,” says Bentley Associate Director Nancy Bartlett, who edited the book along with Bentley archivists Liz Gadelha and Cinda Nofziger. “Teaching students how to analyze and understand primary sources is how you can teach students to analyze and understand anything.”

History Students Win U-M Library Award for “Give Earth a Chance” Website (May 2018)

In May 2018, four students in History 399, “Environmental Activism in Michigan,” won the second-place prize for undergraduate research during AY 2017-2018 in the Maize category for single-term projects, awarded by U-M Libraries and sponsored by JABberwocky Literacy Agency.  Meghan Clark, Amanda Hampton, Julia Montag, and Hannah Thoms received the award for their contributions to the digital exhibit “Give Earth a Chance: Environmental Activism in Michigan” during the Fall 2017 semester.

View the award citation here.

From the citation:

Format:  Website, Online Exhibit

The U-M Library Undergraduate Library Research Award Committee is pleased to award Second Place in the Maize Award category for Single-Term Projects to Meghan Clark, Amanda Hampton, Julia Montag, and Hannah Thoms for their project in the Department of History entitled “Give Earth a Chance: Environmental Activism in Michigan.” The four-member student team underwent the daunting task of generating the bulk of the material in a content-rich website that is, according to their professor, Matthew Lassiter, “a phenomenal accomplishment.”

Through its use of a vast array of digitized archival documents and images, interviews, multimedia, and a powerful textual narrative, this unique scholarly resource successfully provides a nuanced examination of environmental activism occurring at U-M over the past 50 years and places it in the broader national context. The committee was impressed by the team’s extensive exploration and use of primary sources within numerous archival collections in the Bentley Historical Library, within the Joseph A. Labadie Collection in the Special Collections Library, accessible via the Michigan Daily Digital Archive, and available online through other institutions and organizations. They supplemented these resources with plenty of books as well as articles from newspapers and scholarly journals.

Deftly navigating the logistics of digitization and building the website, the team coalesced an extraordinary amount of research into an online resource that Lassiter hopes will be recognized as “a model of publicly engaged and digital humanities collaborative scholarship that shows what students can accomplish in collaborative research projects.”