“Radical simply means grasping things at the root.”
- Angela Davis
Welcome
I’m Beth, a postdoctoral researcher, speaker, and writer working at the intersections of critical environmental history, fat studies, disability studies, and environmental justice.
My Approach
Collaborative
Whether I'm co-authoring research on inclusive biology education, engaging with complex historical narratives through my writing, or challenging colonial conceptions of conservation in the Feminist Earthways lab, I prioritize dialogue and shared inquiry.
I believe that meaningful scholarship, activism, and pedagogy emerge from collective effort, especially when it centers marginalized voices and challenges dominant frameworks.
Framework
My work is rooted in disability studies, fat studies, settler colonial critique, and decolonial theory, with a strong grounding in environmental justice.
By centering marginalized perspectives, I aim to challenge supremacy narratives and foster more inclusive, liberatory approaches to environmental thought and action.
Two Free Upcoming October Events
Join in person in Fort Collins or virtually on Zoom.
We have to make sure we don’t overfill the room, so use the link below to register.
Beth Defended in March
The defense is the last step of the doctoral process before walking at graduation. Beth defended her dissertation work in late March to her committee, the CSU biology community, friends, and family.
Watch below!
Recent Talks
Herd Mentality: Conservation, Eugenics, and Population Management
US conservation history is typically retold from a Western perspective and has established iconic figures as founders who came to prominence during the conception of the conservation movement. However, another immensely impactful movement was growing concurrently in the US, eugenics.
In this interactive lecture, the historical conservation figures who supported eugenics are profiled to expose how eugenics and conservation both aimed to engineer a future in which white American settlers would dominate the land through a logic of elimination. I argue that eugenic logics have always been and continue to be a part of the conservation movement.
The Racial Politics of Health and Body Size
Based off of the canonical work of Dr. Sabrina Strings’ book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. This interactive presentation goes all the way back to the 1500s to trace the beginnings of fatphobia and how they get tied to the European racial hierarchy. Armed with this knowledge, we can start to interrogate the thin ideal as a mechanism of white supremacy. This talk also helps audience members understand how the values and morality we assign to food and the concept of health are entangled in fatphobia and racism.
Sick of the City: The Politics of Nature as Medicine
This interactive lecture takes a critical disability and fat justice lens to the history of American conservation to complicate the ideal that going outside makes one healthy.
Attendees learn about how wilderness was established as an instrument to define and refine wealthy white male bodies in service to white supremacy during the Progressive Era. With this foundation, we track a through line of ways that ableism and sizeism have gone unchecked in outdoor culture.
Get in touch!
