It is no surprise that the growth of the Honors College has come with new dynamic professors that are bound to enrich the honors experience for students. Dr. Menrisky, a Professor fairly new to the university, is one of these exciting additions that has become a part of the honors fabric recently.
Professor Menrisky is a full-time English and Communications Professor within the English department. He teaches classes like ENL 101 and 102, and recently Hon 301. According to Professor Menrisky, being able to teach students who are willing to learn has made his stay at UmassD wholesome. But the Honors college brings a different kind of connection with students that he appreciates. The ability to engage with and mentor students on a personal level is one benefit of the honors college that he particularly enjoys.
Professor Menrisky specializes in American Literature, particularly those of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in conjunction with environmental humanities. Environmental humanities addresses prominent and persistent environmental problems using questions about ethnicity, values, culture, ethics, and so on. His intrigue in environmental humanities has grown through his interests in the ideas of identity and how identity through stories mingles with the narratives of the environment.
His research has flourished into publications, and notably into a new book coming out soon, published by Cambridge University Press. This book examines late 1960’s environmentalists who borrowed rhetoric from social movements organized along the lines of race, gender, and so on, thereby reducing these movements to identity politics rather than scientific philosophies. The book also examines the role that literature played in these reductions, and how the actions of these environmentalists have shaped present-day mainstream American Environmentalism.
His next book project is titled “Everyday Ecofascism: Contemporary Narratives of Climate and Consumption” which focuses on how explicit and casual expressions of American Ecofascism or anti-Native and anti-immigrant environmentalism have been brought on by American consumption be it food, drugs, or commodities.
Come next semester, Professor Menrisky will be teaching a new Honors 200 course, Hon 202-01B, a class that will be dealing with Environmental racism and Justice. Because the course is multidisciplinary, students will learn how to identify environmental racism in their different majors or concentrations and learn how they can implicitly and explicitly impact such racism and inspire justice.
Students will also be able to explore how racial issues like gentrification has pushed minority groups into paths of environmental harm. There will be an opportunity to examine this issue up close via the Acushnet river that has been contaminated by the dumping of a toxic chemical called Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB) during the mid-20th century.
The homes near this river are occupied by minority groups who are there probably as a result of environmental racism. They are, therefore, disproportionally exposed to these toxins that can
lead to health complications such as cancer. Though the class will be held online next semester, Professor Menrisky hopes to create an engaging and stimulating environment for all students who participate.
We are grateful to have Professor Menrisky here as an integral part of UmassD and the Honors College.
Written By: Busola Awobode