My research interests include green jobs and other environmental labor market dynamics; urban agriculture and food security; social movement analysis; environmental justice; leisure and natural resource use; poverty; and race, gender and ethnic relations. My current research includes an assessment of the urban food deserts in Midwestern cities as well as analyses of the green jobs sector.  Other recent research activities have included four national studies of racial and gender diversity in the environmental field.  I have just completed a book on urban environmental history; I am in the process of completing companion books on (a) conservation history and (b) environmental justice history.  

Research Interests:

• Urban agriculture and food security
• Green jobs
• Social movement analysis
• Environmental justice
• Leisure and natural-resource use
• Poverty and urban issues
• Environmental history and ideology
• Social inequality
• International development issues

Current/Recent Research:

Projects and Initiatives 
I am the Program Director for the Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative (MELDI) a project in SNRE. MELDI is aimed at providing resources that students and environmental professionals can use to help develop their careers and find out about jobs and funding.  MELDI's website also provides information on environmental justice research, organizations and events of interest in the field.  For more information visit the MELDI website at http://meldi.snre.umich.edu/.

Teaching Interests:
 I believe that each person has the capacity to learn and get excited about environmental issues. I think a thorough understanding of the past informs present thinking and actions. I believe that teaching that is built on a foundation of solid knowledge, rigor and freedom to push the boundaries and think beyond the ordinary produce the mosti exciting results. To this end, I employ a variety of proven traditional techniques in my teaching. However, I complement this with cutting-edge approaches to help students to become well grounded in the discipline but still be able to think creatively about issues.

Current/Recent Teaching:

Selected Publications:

Recent Publications 

Winner of the 2010 Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award for the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association for publication completed between 2009 and 2009.

Listen to podcast of interview on Progressive Radio about the Environment and the People:   http://www.progressive.org/radiotaylor10.html.

In The Environment and the People in American Cities, Dorceta E. Taylor provides an in-depth examination of the development of urban environments, and urban environmentalism, in the United States. Taylor focuses on the evolution of the city, the emergence of elite reformers, the framing of environmental problems, and the perceptions of and responses to breakdowns in social order, from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. She demonstrates how social inequalities repeatedly informed the adjudication of questions related to health, safety, and land access and use. While many accounts of environmental history begin and end with wildlife and wilderness, Taylor shows that the city offers important clues to understanding the evolution of American environmental activism.

Taylor traces the progression of several major thrusts in urban environmental activism, including the alleviation of poverty; sanitary reform and public health; safe, affordable, and adequate housing; parks, playgrounds, and open space; occupational health and safety; consumer protection (food and product safety); and land use and urban planning. At the same time, she provides a historical analysis of the ways race, class, and gender shaped experiences and perceptions of the environment as well as environmental activism and the construction of environmental discourses. Illuminating connections between the social and environmental conflicts of the past and those of the present, Taylor describes the displacement of people of color in early America, the cozy relationship between middle-class environmentalists and the business community, and the continuous resistance against environmental inequalities on the part of ordinary residents from marginal communities.  See http://meldi.snre.umich.edu/node/14094 for further details.