Graduate Directory

Summary of Expertise

Justine is a graduate student in History of Consciousness who studies ecological literatures, politics, and histories. Drawing on her training in German and environmental literatures, her master's thesis developed a literary-ecological reading of Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno. Her dissertation project studies Indigenous Pacific knowledges and analyzes how they bear upon political and ecological concerns. Through ethnographic research on Aotea (Great Barrier Island) and a study of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), this project analyzes ways of knowing embedded in oral and literary expressions, including stories (pūrakau), chants (karakia), and genealogies (whakapapa). Thinking about knowledge formations as languages, her project aims to translate between Indigenous knowledges and Western--political and natural--sciences, while paying attention to those elements that may resist translation. If translation involves a certain kind of reading, what arts of reading can be cultivated to examine dynamic forms of political, scientific, and historical consciousness? How might these forms of consciousness coordinate new responses to living amidst ecological collapse?

Research Interests

German literature & philosophy; Māori/Pacific thought; political theory; intellectual history; critical theory; politics & aesthetics; ecological thought; indigenous studies; environmental/oceanic humanities; feminist science studies

Biography, Education and Training

M.A. Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 2017

B.A. Interdisciplinary Studies (Literature & Politics), UC Berkeley, 2012

Honors, Awards and Grants

Cota-Robles Fellow, UC Santa Cruz (2021- )

SEACoast Junior Scholar Research Funds (2024)

UCHRI Working Group ("Coast as Crisis") (2022-23)

Tribeca Fellow, UC Santa Cruz (Summer 2022)

Beall Fellow, University of Oregon (2015-17)

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow, UC Berkeley (2011)

Selected Publications

"Love the Killjoy." In Millennial Feminism at Work, edited by Jane Juffer. New York: Cornell University Press, Nov 2021.

"Upcycling." In In, From & With: Exploring Collaborative Survival, preface by Anna Tsing, edited by Grace Denis. Berlin: Circadian Books, March 2021.

"On the Meaning of Home in a More-than-Human World." In Lady Science, 24 Nov 2020. 

"Of Abortions, Miscarriages, and Would-Be Mothers." In Lady Science, 10 Dec 2019. 

"Fecundity." In Environmental Humanities, vol. 9, no. 2, 2017.

"Narrative, Speech and Action: Gandhi's Satyagraha and the Constant Becoming of Truth." Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 2012.

"Narratives and the Social Imagination: Lessons in Reading for Gandhi's Theory of Action. Presented at Summer Undergraduate Research Conference on August 23, 2011. Published in Berkeley Undergraduate Research Journal, vol. 24, no. 2, 2011.

Teaching Interests

political & intellectual history; literature and philosophy; speculative fictions; environmental thought