Rate My Professor Jay Fiskio

Jay Fiskio is Professor of Environmental Studies and Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College. She earned a BA/MDiv from Earlham College, an MA in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon, and a PhD in Environmental Science, Studies, and Policy from the University of Oregon. As an environmental humanist, Fiskio's research and teaching emphasize collaborative, community-based engagements with environmental challenges such as climate change, direct action, environmental justice, and food justice, particularly within the Rust Belt context.

Fiskio has collaborated with the Africatown, Alabama community since 2014. Founded by survivors of the last illegal transatlantic slave trade voyage on the Clotilda in 1859, Africatown endures environmental racism from surrounding polluting facilities. Her projects preserve oral histories of resilience amid enslavement, segregation, and relocation. In 2017, Fiskio secured an NSF conference grant from the Arctic Social Sciences Program to host a workshop uniting Africatown elders, youth, leaders, pastors, and Oberlin community members with counterparts from Utqiaġvik, Alaska. This effort develops narratives connecting environmental justice, climate change, cultural identity, settler colonialism, diaspora, and Indigenous and African American experiences. Fiskio and students are building the Africatown Digital Archive for public access to these traditions. She is pursuing further NSF EAGER funding. Fiskio's book, Climate Change, Literature, and Environmental Justice: Poetics of Dissent and Repair (Cambridge University Press, 2021), analyzes climate change through lenses of enslavement, colonialism, resistance, speculative fiction, dissent, and reparative practices like dancing, cooking, and blockades. She teaches Introduction to Food Studies (FOOD 101), Introduction to Environmental Humanities (EVSS 201), American Agricultures (CAST 302/EVSS 302), Nature, Culture, & Interpretation (ENVS 201), Climate Change: Ethics, Equity, Narratives (ENVS 219), and Environmental Justice Literature (ENVS 304). Under her guidance, students present research at conferences, including a 2019 climate change event awarding senior Eli Presberg. Fiskio supports Oberlin's $1M Mellon Foundation grant for Food Studies partnering with Lorain County Community College, enhancing local food justice engagement.