Sarah Jaquette Ray is chair of the Environmental Studies Department. She came to Cal Poly Humboldt after working for four years at University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, where she led the Geography and Environmental Studies BA program and was a professor of English. 

Her work focuses on the role of emotions in environmental and climate justice and politics. Ray's first book, The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (Arizona, 2013) explored the emotion of “environmentalist disgust” in U.S. history, and its legacy of ableism, xenophobia, and eco-fascism in mainstream ecological thought. She is co-editor of three volumes bridging social justice and environmentalism: the award-winning Latinx Environmentalisms: Justice, Place, and the Decolonial, Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory, and Critical Norths: Space, Nature, Theory. 

Her current work focuses this attention to emotions, mindsets, and collective wisdom on climate justice activism, especially among younger generations. Ray teaches, researches, writes, and facilitates workshops that bring together inner practices, social psychology, and collective action for climate justice. Her book on this topic, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (California, 2020), is an existential toolkit for the climate generation. She also led an international network of educators that crowdsourced an open-access database of "existential tools", which resulted in a co-edited volume called The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators (2024). 

Ray's writing on emotions and climate justice activism has been published in the LA Times, Scientific American, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Edge Effects, KCET, and Zocalo Public Square. She speaks around the world on the role of emotions in climate justice politics and activism, and has been interviewed on eminent podcasts such as Hidden Brain and The Atlantic’s “How to Age Up”. 

Ray is host of a radio show and podcast called Climate Magic, in which she interviews experts who can help us work with despair and find pleasure and purpose– “climate magic”--  in engaging in climate action.

Website: https://sarahjaquetteray.com/