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HEIDI HUTNER

Heidi Hutner

Associate Professor of English and Sustainability
Ph.D. University of Washington, Seattle, 1993
Environmental literature and film; ecofeminism; environmental justice; feminism; race studies; women's literature
Affiliations: School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and Women's and Gender Studies
Humanities 2081
Heidi.Hutner@stonybrook.edu

Facebook: @hhutner; Instagram: @heidihutner; Twitter: @HeidiHutner

View Dr. Hutner's Website

View Tedx “Ecofeminism and Ecogrief”

View RADIOACTIVE Film Website

RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island, a feature documentary. 
A resonant story about a battle of wills, hubris, and energy – atomic, maternal, moral, and feminist.
At the prompting of an ecofeminism professor turned visual journalist, the four original “concerned” mothers, a two-woman legal team and a reporter - now all much older, wiser, and bolder - break open years of corporate silencing and nuclear industry doublespeak, and tell their stories about the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident, the worst commercial nuclear reactor meltdown in U.S. history. And though this disaster took place in 1979, the life and death implications continue in the spiritual, physical, and political DNA of the community, its residents, and their descendants.
 
  • Biography

    Biography 

    Dr. Heidi Hutner is a scholar, writer, filmmaker, and teacher of ecofeminism, environmental justice, environmental humanities, nuclear studies, literature, and film. She is the winner of Sierra Club Long Island's 2015 award. Hutner chaired the Sustainability Studies Program for six years and was Associate Dean in the School of Marine, Atmospheric Science, and Sustainability. Hutner publishes widely as a writer and journalist on nuclear, environmental, environmental justice, and gender issues. She regularly gives public and keynote talks at universities and conferences on environmental studies and ecofeminism. As director, writer, and producer, Hutner just completed the 75-minute documentary film, RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island. RADIOACTIVE is sponsored by Women Make Movies, and produced by film luminaries such as Judith Helfand and Richard Saperstein. RADIOACTIVE is headed to the film festival circuit. Hutner's current book project, RADIOACTIVE: Women's Voices and Nuclear Disasters, will accompany the film and forms the basis of the documentary project. Her books, book chapters, and essays have been published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Virginia Press, Palgrave Press, Rowman and Littlefield Press, Broadview Press, among others. As a journalist, she writes for the New York Times DOT EARTHMs. MagazinePublic Radio InternationalLongreadsAEONDAMESpirituality and HealthMom's Clean Air ForceYes!Tikkun, and more. Hutner recently appeared on the NBC News Think episode, “Clean Water is a Human Right” and gave the popular Tedx: "Eco-Grief and Ecofeminism." She produces the web video show, Coffee with Hx2, in which she interviews world experts, Nobel Peace Prize winners, McArthur Genius Fellows, and other experts on sustainability and environmental issues. Hutner was the associate producer of the off-Broadway climate-change musical, Endangered
     
    For more about Heidi Hutner (and full list of her projects/publications), see her website: HeidiHutner.com and her film website: RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island.
  • Publications

    PUBLICATIONS

    FILMS

    RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island, Documentary Feature Film (Release date: 2022; Copyright, 2023): AUDIENCE AWARD for BEST DOCUMENTARY, Dances With Films Festival, NYC 2022. Heidi Hutner: Director, Writer, Producer, Executive Producer.

    RADIOACTIVE Premiered at DANCES with FILMS NYC Festival, 2022. AUDIENCE AWARD
    for BEST DOCUMENTARY.
    RADIOACTIVE will screen at the Nation’s Capital ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL,
    WASHINGTON DC, March 25, 2023.
    RADIOACTIVE will screen at Cinequest Film Festival, August 2023 (more to announced
    soon).

    RADIOACTIVE will screen in commercial and community theatres in Paris, France, and other locations in the EU (TBA); Harrisburg Pennsylvania; Utah; California; New York; and other locations in the US (TBA); Japan; Greenpeace Tour (scheduling now), NYC, Hudson Valley; San Diego; and others.
    RADIOACTIVE is under submission with VOD and SVOD stations, and Public Television.
    RADIOACTIVE is sponsored by Women Make Movies.

    BOOKS
    Colonial Women: Race, Culture and Stuart Drama. Heidi Hutner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

    Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Ed. Heidi Hutner. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.


    EDITED BOOKS and TEXTS (Select)
    The Conclusions to The History of Miss Sidney Bidulph, by Frances Sheridan. Heidi Hutner and Nicole Garret Eds. Toronto: Broadview Literary Texts, 2013.

    The History of Miss Sidney Bidulph, by Frances Sheridan. Heidi Hutner and Nicole Garret Eds. Toronto: Broadview Literary Texts, 2011.


    BOOK-IN-PROGRESS
    RADIOACTIVE: Ecofeminism and Eco-Grief (A narrative-nonfiction book in essays) An ecofeminist series of narrative-nonfiction essays in which Hutner weaves women’s and underrepresented peoples’ (black, brown, indigenous) oral histories of nuclear disaster with feminist radiation-health science.


    SCIENCE RESEARCH
    Project Title: Three Mile Island Low-level Exposure to Radioxenon: a Re-Examination Using New Cytogenomics (3 MILER RUN). Project Dates: 7/1/23-6/30/25. PI: Doug Brugge; MPI: Susan Bailey; Aaron Datesman; Heidi Hutner. In-prep and under grant submission with NIH. (Expected date of publication, 2024)


    VIDEO WEB SERIES
    FLORENCE BELSKY Video WEB SERIES A Green Future.Creator, Producer, Director, On-Camera Interviewer. Featuring: Michael E. Mann (U Penn), Mark Jacobson (Stanford), Harriet Shugarman (Climate
    Reality, Climate Mama), Tiokasin Ghosthorse, J. Drew Lanham (MacArthur Fellow), and Dr. Lyla
    June, PhD (Indigenous activist and performer), Gina Belafonte (Belafonte Foundation).

    Coffee with HX2 channel (Stony Brook University). Creator, Director, Producer, On-Camera Interviewer. A video web series on environment, climate, and sustainability. The series, to date, includes over thirty exceptional interviews with Nobel Prize, McArthur Geniuses, leading scientists and environmental experts, writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians—all speaking about their work on environmental topics.
    --Hosted at Society for Literature and the Environment
    --Hosted three times on New York Times- DOT EARTH
    --Hosted at HeidiHutner.com and YouTube


    TED TALK and TV
    NBC TV NEWS “Water Rights as a Human Right,” 2017. 

    TEDX, “Ecofeminism and EcoGrief,” November, 2015. 

     

    ASSOCIATE THEATRE PRODUCER
    Off-Broadway Musical: Endangered (2017)

     

    PUBLICATIONS

    Essays in Peer Reviewed Journals

    “Nuclear Fallout Family: Tales from Miami.” Journal of Florida Studies, March 2016. Peer Reviewed. 

    “Hurricane Sandy Diary.” ISLE Winter, 2014, Oxford. Peer Reviewed. 

    “The Birth of An Eco-Mom: Cancer, Feminism, and the Environment.” Environmental Natures: The Natural, The Social, The Built. MIRCI 2.1. July 2011. Peer Reviewed.

    Essays and Chapters in Books

    “Fighting Through Fallout: Maternal and Feminist Resistance and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster,” Oral History and the Environment. Ed. Stephen Sloan, Oxford UP, 2022. 

    “Lessons from the Wild.” The Animal Mind, Ed. Pam Weintraub, Centennial Media, 2021. 

    “Dogs of Chernobyl.” with Erica Cirino. Ed. Pam Weintraub, The Animal Mind, Centennial Media, 2020. 

    “The Grieving Landscape: Wombs and Walls Do Not Protect.” Eds Kristen Iversen and Warren J. Perry, A Doom with A View, Fulcrum Press, 2020. 

    “Radioactive: Trump’s Masculinity and How Women Must Rid the World of Nuclear Bombs.” Fury: Women’s Responses to the Election of Trump. Eds. Amy Roost and Alissa Hirschfield, Regal Press, 2020. 

    “Japanese Women and Antinuclear Activism After the Fukushima.” The Sustainability Handbook, Case Studies and Practical Applications, Ed. Robert Brinkmann, Palgrave, 2018. 

    “Mothering and Cancer: The Awakening of an Ecofeminist.” Maternal Pedagogies: In and Outside the Classroom. Eds. Deborah Byrd and Fiona Green. Toronto: Demeter Press, 2011. 

    “An Introduction to Miss Sidney Bidulph.” The History of Miss Sidney Bidulph, by Frances Sheridan. Ed. Heidi Hutner (with Nicole Garret). Toronto: Broadview Literary Texts, 2011. 

    “Ecofeminism and Mothering.” Encyclopedia of Mothering. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Golson Books, 2010. 

    “Ecofeminism, Motherhood, and the Post-Apocalyptic Utopia in Into the Forest and Parable of the Sower.” Ed. Barbara Cook Women, Writing, Nature. Kentucky: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. 

    "Rereading Aphra Behn: An Introduction," Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Heidi Hutner, Ed. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

    "Revisioning the Female Body: The Rover, parts I and II," Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Ed. Heidi Hutner. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

    "Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: The Politics of Gender, Race and Class," Living By the Pen: Early Women Writers. Ed. Dale Spender. New York: Teacher's College, Columbia University Press, 1992.

    "Evelina and the Problem of the Female Grotesque," Genre 23 (1990). Peer Reviewed.

    Articles for Print and Online Magazines (Select)

    “The Grieving Landscape.” LONGREADS, June 2020.

    “Earth Day, Ecofeminism, and Racial Injustice in the Year of the Plague, Covid-19,” Ms Magazine, April 2020. 

    “Nuclear Power is Not the Answer in the Time of Climate Change.” with Erica Cirino, AEON Magazine, 2019.

    “Rocky Flats.” Proximity Magazine, Fall 2018. 

    “Women Will Rid the World of Nuclear Bombs,” Dame Magazine, March 9, 2018. 

    "A Mother and Daughter who Marched are ‘tentatively hopeful’ about Feminist Activism under Trump." Public Radio International, January 24, 2018. 

    The Weapons in Our Lives.” Proximity Magazine, October 5, 2017.

    “Voting for the Planet.” Editor’s pick on Medium.

    "In Madagascar Test, Drone Delivers Medicine by Air." New York Times, Dot Earth, November 2016. 

    “Activist Casey Camp-Horinek on Mothering and the Standing Rock Protest.” Mom’s Clean Air Force, October, 2016. 

    "A Conservationist's Call For Humans to Curb Harm to Our Animal Kin." New York Times, Dot Earth Blog, July 2016. 

    “A Conversation with Dr. Heidi Cullen, Climate Scientist.” Moms Clean Air Force, July 2016. 

    “It’s All About the Kids at the Play-In for Climate Action.” Mom’s Clean Air Force, July 2016.

    “Death in the Woods.” Tikkun, May 2016 

    “Paris Envy, Or Why I Stayed Home, ” Garnet News, December 8, 2015. 

    “Notes for My Next Book,” Proximity Magazine, Fall 2015. 

    “Invisible Victims,” Ms. Magazine (Print) Summer 2015. 

    “A Lack of Precaution is the Biggest Problem in U.S. Chemical Regulation,” Tikkun, July 31st, 2015. 

    “Aileen Mioko Smith: Anti-Nuclear Activist,” Ms. Magazine, March 2015. 

    “Pete Seeger: My Spiritual Father,” Spirituality and Health Magazine, January 2014. 

    “International Women’s Earth and Climate Initiative,” Spirituality and Health Magazine, October 2013. 

    “Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth,” Spirituality and Health Magazine, July 2013. 

    “Fracking as Toxic Trespass,” Ms. Magazine, April 2013.

    “Living Downstream: Sandra Steingraber,” Ms. Magazine, October 19, 2012. 

    “Why I’m Going to the Women’s Congress for Future Generations and Why You Should, Too,” Tikkun Magazine, September 2012. 

    “A Mothers Movement for Future Generations,” Yes! Magazine, September 2012. 

    “In Japan, A Mothers’ Movement Against Nuclear Power,” Yes! Magazine, April 25, 2012.

    “One Year After Fukushima: Why We Must Shut Down Indian Point Now,” Sierra Club Atlantic, March 2012. 

    “Thanksgiving Victories and some Leftovers,” Common Dreams, November 26, 2011.

    “A Personal Response to the President’s Cancer Panel,” Enviroblog: Enviromental Working Group. July 2010.

  • Academic and Teaching Honors

    ACADEMIC AND TEACHING HONORS

    Teaching Awards

    Women’s Studies Award for Teaching and Scholarship, Stony Brook, 2008
    Women’s Studies Award for Teaching and Scholarship, Stony Brook, 2006

    Fellowships and Awards

    FAHSS AWARD SUNY Stony Brook, 2010.
    University of Washington Teaching Stipend and Tuition Fellowship, 1987-93.
    Hunter College Graduate Study Fellowship, 1987.
    Hunter College English Graduate Study Award, 1987.

  • Courses Taught

    COMMUNITY ACTIVISM

    An important part of Professor Hutner's teaching and scholarship includes directly engaging with current environmental issues such as climate change, fracking, women's and racial environmental activism, toxics education, and anti-nuclear projects. She works on environmental education and advocacy with local community environmental groups such as  Grassroots Environmental Education and Clearwater, and she writes regularly about environmentalism at her blog, at Tikkun Magazine, Sierra Club, Ms, Common Dreams, and Yes!. She works with Dr. Malcolm Bowman from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences on Earthstock at Stony Brook each year to bring speakers and helps creates events.