Amanda J. Baugh
Environmental Humanities Scholar, Educator, Writer
Amanda J. Baugh is a scholar of the environmental humanities working at the intersection of religion, race, and environmental justice. She is a Professor and the Associate Chair of Religious Studies and Director of the MA Program in Sustainability at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). Baugh's research on overlooked environmental actors stems from conversations with her students at CSUN, a Hispanic-Serving Institution in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley that serves many first-generation college students from working-class, immigrant communities. By interrogating raced and classed assumptions about who can be an environmentalist and what can count as environmentalism, Baugh's teaching, research, and writing aim to develop more inclusive, equitable, and effective forms of environmentalism.
Published Books
Explores the contours of Latinx Catholic environmentalism
"Amanda Baugh unveils the home-based ‘la tierra environmentalism’ of the U.S. faith group that surveys report is most likely to address climate change: Latinx Catholics. Her superb study belies the frequent presumption that Latinx communities are merely victims of environmental injustice, underscoring that Latinx conservation efforts necessitate a more holistic analysis than the standard Eurocentric narratives of religious environmentalism." ~Timothy Matovina, University of Notre Dame
"Falling in Love With Nature is the result of extensive ethnographic research that highlights the need for new narratives within the realm of ecological engagement with a religious dimension."
~PNEO Magazine
"... A valuable contribution, and it has much to offer scholars from different fields. The book provides an important call to those invested in creating a better world, asking them to consider the perspectives of those often left out of the environmentalist discourse."
~H-Net Reviews
"Falling in Love with Nature ably demonstrates the need to complicate prevailing narratives of environmental activism and to populate our accounts with the local voices and communities too often on the front lines of environmental crises."
~American Catholic Studies
Examines negotiations of racial and ethnic identities as central to the history of religious environmentalism
