Joyce M. Barry, visiting assistant professor of women’s studies, has published an article titled “Women, Environmental Justice, and the Coal River Mountain Watch” in the 5th edition of Women’s Lives: Images and Realities. Barry’s article examines the political participation of working-class women in Appalachia in the environmental justice group, the Coal River Mountain Watch. The group was founded in 1998 to fight the effects of mountaintop removal coal operations in local communities in southern West Virginia.
Barry’s article highlights the ways in which women involved in this campaign have successfully re-directed their gender roles in the private sphere of home and family outward into the public arena of environmental justice activism. Her essay appears in the “Changing Our World” section of Women’s Lives: Images and Realities, which is published by McGraw-Hill.
