Water Stories

The arts and humanities further environmental justice work and thread together human connections to nature and humans' connections to each other. This project, developed by Dr. Tru Leverette Hall and Dr. Maureen McCluskey, uses storytelling and theater to gather communities, translate environmental land memory, frame conversations on environmental justice, and foster communal healing and positive connections to nature through shared embodied experience. Water Stories: A River Harvest showcases theatrical movements based on oral histories of African American experiences with the natural world. Like the griot (storyteller) figure of the African diasporic tradition, Water Stories: A River Harvest gives voice to underheard stories and demonstrates that the stories we tell (and who has a platform to tell them) shape our environmental justice work (and vice versa).

This project, developed by Dr. Tru Leverette Hall and Dr. Maureen McCluskey, uses storytelling and theater to gather communities, translate environmental land memory, frame conversations on environmental justice, and foster communal healing and positive connections to nature through shared embodied experience.