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The Watershed Institute welcomes Carolyn Finney, Ph.D., Scholar-in-Residence for Environmental Affairs at Middlebury College, for a virtual discussion on June 9 from 6 – 7:15 p.m.
Dr. Finney is a storyteller, author, and cultural geographer who studies identity, difference, creativity, and resilience. Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, was released in 2014 (UNC Press). Her work aims to develop greater cultural competency within environmental organizations and institutions, challenge media outlets on their representation of difference, and increase awareness of how privilege shapes who gets to speak to environmental issues and determine policy and action.
She has also served as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky and as a visiting scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Among her awards, Dr. Finney is a Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the Canon National Parks Science Scholars Fellowship. She served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board for eight years, assisting the National Park Service in its efforts to build relationships of reciprocity with diverse communities.
Each year, the Watershed hosts the Muriel Buttinger Lecture in honor of benefactor Dr. Muriel Buttinger, a heroic figure in the Austrian Underground during the run-up to World War II who helped rescue hundreds of Jews and other persecuted people from the Nazis in the late 1930s. Dr. Buttinger left a lasting legacy as a founder of the International Rescue Committee, a child psychiatrist, and a philanthropist who donated the 400-acre Brookdale Farm to the Watershed in the latter 20th century and supported numerous other causes and individuals.