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![\"frazier-photo\"](\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/frazier-photo.jpg\")
Driven by her passion for social justice, Jessica Frazier is in a unique position to affect change at the University of Rhode Island. She collaborates across colleges and disciplines, stimulating critical conversations around gender, justice, and the environment.<\/p>\n
Frazier first joined URI in 2013 as a visiting assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) with the Gender and Women\u2019s Studies Program. Her background and expertise in U.S. women\u2019s history and social movements quickly earned her a tenure-track position as assistant professor, and a joint appointment between the Department of History in A&S and the\u00a0Department of Marine Affairs<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS)<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI like the flexibility of URI,\u201d says Frazier, who teaches courses on environmental justice issues, marine environmental history, and transnational women\u2019s networks. \u201cI find it fantastic to be able to collaborate across colleges; it is something unique to URI and my position here.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to her dual-college role, Frazier launched CELS\u2019 first-ever\u00a0Environmental Justice Speaker Series<\/a>\u00a0in collaboration with CELS professor Amelia Moore. As part of the lecture series, speakers from academic institutions across the country are invited to talk about the interconnection of race, poverty, gender, and environmental policies at the local, national, and international levels.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal was to get people talking about the connection between environmental and social science, and how it\u2019s important to be looking at issues of justice when it comes to environmental policies and planning,\u201d says Frazier, who looks forward to hosting another speaker series in the spring of 2018.<\/p>\n Frazier\u2019s research focuses on women’s transnational social movements and connections they have made between women\u2019s rights, peace, environmental issues, and racial injustice. \u201cWomen tend to be leaders of local environmental justice campaigns,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt is often women as mothers who notice or fear the effects of toxics, waste, and pollution in their communities and decide to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n For Frazier, social justice is not just an area of study, it is the lens through which she views the world. She credits her alma mater for instilling in her the Jesuit value of service for others.\u00a0 After earning her bachelor\u2019s in Mathematics and Spanish from Regis University in 2003, Frazier worked as an actuary in Chicago and volunteered with several organizations in her spare time. She taught English to Spanish-speaking residents who are learning English as a second language and worked with female survivors of domestic violence.<\/p>\n \u201cVolunteering was a way for me to get involved with the community and give back,\u201d reflects Frazier on a turning point in her career. \u201cThrough that volunteer work I knew that what I was doing for my job was not what I wanted to do, so I decided to go back to school to do something related to women and gender.\u201d<\/p>\n Frazier went on to earn both her master\u2019s and PhD in History from SUNY Binghamton, where she focused on U.S. women\u2019s history in the 20th century. Her dissertation on U.S. women\u2019s transnational activism during the Vietnam war era was selected as the Lerner-Scott Prize Finalist for Best Dissertation in U.S. Women\u2019s History in the country. Her doctoral work provided the building blocks for her new book,\u00a0Women’s Antiwar Diplomacy during the Vietnam War Era (Gender and American Culture)<\/em><\/a>. Published in 2017, Frazier\u2019s book explores the unique\u00a0 relationships forged between American and Vietnamese women in civil rights, peace, and women\u2019s liberation organizations during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the powerful role they played in global antiwar activism.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Vietnam war history a lot of attention is given to the American perspective–this is changing, and my book is forwarding research that takes into account the Vietnamese perspective,\u201d explains Frazier, who had the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and interview former women diplomats first-hand.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen have historically been ignored in decision making circles,\u201d she says. Yet, as Frazier\u2019s work at CELS demonstrates, solutions to these complex issues require an interdisciplinary approach that takes into account different perspectives.<\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re addressing anitwar diplomacy or environmental policy,\u201cIt’s important to invite and respect people, (including women) with local knowledge to the table,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Driven by her passion for social justice, Jessica Frazier is in a unique position to affect change at the University of Rhode Island. She collaborates across colleges and disciplines, stimulating critical conversations around gender, justice, and the environment. Frazier first joined URI in 2013 as a visiting assistant professor in the College of Arts and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}