Graduate Student 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 knowledge formations and analyzes how they bear upon political and ecological concerns. Through research on Aotea (Great Barrier Island) and a study of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), she analyzes ways of knowing embedded in oral and literary expressions, including stories (pūrākau) and genealogical relationships (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

political & ecological thought; literary & aesthetic theory; German literature & philosophy; Māori/Pacific thought; intellectual history; critical theory; 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

2024-25 - ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Innovation Fellowship

2021-26 - Cota-Robles Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz 

2024 - Summer Dissertation Fellowship, The Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz

2024 - Graduate Pedagogy Fellowship, Teaching & Learning Center, UC Santa Cruz

2024 - GSI Peer Support Team, Teaching & Learning Center, UC Santa Cruz

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

2022 - Tribeca Fellowship, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz

Selected Publications

"Toward an Oceanic 'Becoming With.'" English Language Notes 62, no. 1 (April 2024): 30-47.

"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. 

"Fecundity." Environmental Humanities 9, no. 2 (Nov 2017): 460-63.

Teaching Interests

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