Julie Sze is a professor and director of American Studies at UC Davis. She is also the founding director of the Environmental Justice Project for UC Davis’ John Muir Institute for the Environment.  Sze’s book, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, won the 2008 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, awarded annually to the best published book in American Studies.  Sze’s research investigates environmental justice and environmental inequality; culture and environment; race, gender and power; and community health and activism. She has published on a wide range of topics such as energy and air pollution activism; toxicity; the cultural politics of the Hummer, and on environmental justice novels and cultural production.