Background
Phillip Campanile is an urban political ecologist and environmental humanist with a particular interest in the postindustrial ecologies and political economy of the Great Lakes and the North American Rust Belt. He looks at how ecological concepts such as resilience frame the way we think about regional urban issues, including climate change, coastal infrastructure, urban governance and economic development. His work critiques these ecological framing concepts and aims to critically re-narrate histories of environmental destruction, highlighting those aspects of destruction obscured in ecological discourse.
Campanile鈥檚 work is grounded in an abiding engagement with critical theoretical debates about nature and the literary work of WG Sebald. His research is grounded in qualitative methods such as landscape analysis and interpretation, participant observation, walking methods and archival research.
He is particularly interested in:
- Postindustrial landscapes
- Environmental history and the political economy of the Great Lakes
- History and theory of ecology
He is currently working on a book called Lake Erie: A Natural History of Destruction as well as articles concerning (1) eco-grief, (2) the transformation of landscape into infrastructure, (3) the paradoxes of limnology, and (4) the trouble with considering Japanese knotweed an invasive species.
Education
- PhD, University of California at Berkeley
- MA, University of Oregon
- BA, Northwestern University