Degree Year
2012
Document Type
Thesis - Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Studies
Advisor(s)
Janet Fiskio
Committee Member(s)
Gina Perez
Michelle Baron
Keywords
Environmental justice, Theater, Community-based research, PAR, Rustbelt, Children's theater
Abstract
Children's knowledge of their eco-social environment is rarely privileged in environmental literature. Their voices help to broaden conceptions of environmental justice, to the benefit of both the environmental justice movement and the emerging discipline of environmental studies. In this community-based research project conducted in partnership with Save Our Children, an afterschool/summer enrichment center, in South Elyria, Ohio, third and fourth grade children utilized Theater of the Oppressed techniques to create an environmental justice narrative in the form of an original play. The goal of Theater of the Oppressed is for participants to dramatically analyze real-life oppressions/obstacles/challenges they face and act out potential solutions to overcome them. I collaborated with the children and staff members at Save Our Children to hold weekly Theater of the Oppressed workshops for an eight-week period. In these workshops, the children explored environmental injustices as it pertained to their own lived experiences and proposed imaginative solutions for dismantling them through an original play. Our community-based research serves as a step towards bringing justice to the city of Elyria by presenting the voices of its residents as an alternative environmental justice narrative that has yet to be heard in the larger environmental justice discussion.
Repository Citation
Lorenz, Lissette, "Rustbelt Theater: Children's Environmental Justice Narratives from South Elyria, OH" (2012). Honors Papers. 365.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors/365
