Cara is a scholar/activist/artist/mother whose work engages feminist embodied theory, and has been the subject of several documentaries for international public television and film. In addition to critically-acclaimed Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era (EifrigPublishing, 2017), her books include: Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene (PennState UniversityPress, 2014) and Climate Justice Now: Transforming the Anthropocene into The Ecozoic Era (Routledge, 2020 pending). She has published dozens of interdisciplinary essays in eco-literacy, environmental justice, epigenetics, philosophy, performance-studies, art, gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies’ journals/anthologies. Her pedagogical practices, work as program director of Jews of the Earth, parenting, and commitment to solidarity economics and lived social-ecological ethics are intimately bound.
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Her photographs/performances have been defended by Freedom-of-Speech organizations (Electronic Freedom Foundation, artsave/People for the AmericanWay, and the ACLU), and are in numerous collections including SanFrancisco MoMA, Berlin’s Jewish Museum, MoMA Salzburg, Austria, KinseyInstitute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, and include collaborations with international choreographers, composers, poets, sculptors, architects, scientists. Alongside Vandana Shiva and Desmond Tutu, Alhadeff received the Random Kindness Award, 2020. Former professor of Performance & Pedagogy at UC Santa Cruz and Critical Philosophy at The Global Center for Advanced Studies, Alhadeff teaches, performs, parents, and lives a creative-zero-waste life.
Alhadeff’s work has been endorsed by scientists, artists, scholars, activists including: Noam Chomsky, Eve Ensler, Bill McKibben, Paul Hawken, James Hansen, SHKG, David Orr, Stephanie Seneff, Avital Ronell, Alphonso Lingis, Henry Giroux, and Lucy Lippard.
MICAELA AMATEAU AMATO
Micaela is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator who has exhibited her work across the globe. She is included in the collections of Albert and Vera List, Rockefeller Collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Museum of Art & Design, Denver Art Museum, Bard Museum Collection, Rose Art Museum Brandeis, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. She is the recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts and Pollock Krasner Awards. Amato is curator and editor of Couples Discourse and Uncanny Congruencies, and Professor Emerita of Art and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She lives in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania.
As a mother/daughter collaboration team, Alhadeff and Amateau Amato have exhibited their visual artwork together across the US and Europe in multiple two-person shows, and have co-presented their research on “petro-pharmaculture” and “petroleum-parenting” at international conferences since the early 1990s.
ZAZU SHOCK ALHADEFF-RACKER
Zazu loves to bike, hike with his friends, and make books. He has illustrated and written with his mother (Cara) a book on the rainforest, a book on jets, and one of petroglyphs.
REAL LIFE HEROES
Over the course of their travels across the Caribbean, India, North Africa, and the Middle East, the three main characters, Zazu, a malamute husky, and a humpback whale, meet many superheroes, such as Maimonides, Rashbi, Queen Zubadya, Rabindranath Tagore, Joha the Sephardic trickster, Gandhi, Sol Hachuel, Harriet Tubman, Doña Gracia Nasi, and Noor Inayat Khan. Together they learn about how they can challenge 21st century villains like Nestlé, Merck, Exxon, and Monsanto—Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Agribusiness giants that stalk the planet. The characters learn about all living things that co-exist as a kind of social permaculture–all interconnected systems of mutual support.
END NOTES
Zazu Dreams also includes over 300 detailed endnotes that I call “The 21st Century Arcades Project.” Together, the narrative, images, and Arcades unravel the intersections between the sciences and humanities—global ecological extinction and cultural extinction of ethnic minorities.
In our culture, we drastically underestimate children’s capacity for complex thought and empathy; I believe that we must recognize how children can creatively confront the crises facing our world and change how adults speak to young people in insightful, empowering ways.
