Ashley Dawson is an author, activist, and professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York.
[2] Dawson was co-editor of Social Text Online from 2010 to 2014 and, by appointment of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), he was also editor of the Journal of Academic Freedom from 2012 to 2014.
[5] Dawson went on to earn a PhD in English at Columbia University under the tutelage of professors Rob Nixon, Anne McClintock, Jean Franco, and Edward Said.
Included in his analysis are a broad, diverse range of works by influential authors; an examination of the cultural and literary impact of crucial historical, social, political and cultural events; an in-depth discussion of Britain's imperial status in the century and the diversification of the nation through Black and Asian British literature; a comprehensive timeline, a glossary of terms, and an addendum of possible further readings.
The solution lies not with fortified sea walls, the book argues, but with urban movements already fighting to remake cities in a more just and equitable fashion.
[15][16] People's Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (2020) Dawson's latest work, published in 2020 by O/R Books, addresses the overwhelming scientific consensus: to avoid irreversible climate collapse, the burning of all fossil fuels will have to end in the next decade.
Energy is a vital element in the great stock of air, water, plants, and cultural forms like language and art that are the inheritance of humanity as a whole.