Muddy connections: levees, drainage and environmental justice in Louisiana

About this Event:

In this talk, Ned Randolph will discuss his recent book, titled Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta: A Call for Reclamation (2024). In this book, Randolph tells the story of Mississippi mud to answer a deceptively simple question: How can a place uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise be one of the nation’s most promiscuous producers of fossil fuels? Blending political ecology, history, and environmental justice, the book examines how river engineering, plantation agriculture, and urban drainage carried out in the name of social progress accelerated environmental and racial exploitation still playing out today. Rejecting technocratic fixes to climate solutions, Muddy Thinking instead calls upon our dirty, shared histories to address urgent questions of mutual survival and care in a rapidly changing world.

About this Speaker:

Ned Randolph investigates the intersection of economic justice and the environment in the Gulf South. A Louisiana native, Ned graduated from Tulane University and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California San Diego. A former newspaper reporter and head writer for Mayor Marc Morial’s Office of Communications, he received master’s degrees in journalism from University of California Berkeley and in creative writing from Eastern Michigan University. Currently, he serves as Climate Policy Fellow at Invest in Louisiana, where he advocates for equitable fiscal and social policies amidst dramatic shifts in federal climate priorities. In addition to teaching, he is anticipating the publication of his second book, entitled A State of Energy, with LSU Press in the Spring 2027.

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