Tenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

How do ethics, applied humanities, and food studies inform each other? How do they challenge each other? How do they redefine each other? How do decolonial and feminist epistemologies inform our understanding of local community as locations for actions and places of knowlege? In this colloquium session, three scholars will discuss their work at the intersection of ethics, applied humanities, and food studies, and engage the audience in a discussion of the tangible philosophy of community engaged practice, exploring ways in which theory can be generated from the ground up, in conversation with community. Tatiana Abatemarco will talk about her work at Bennington College to create a Food Studies program that is based in the humanities and works in the town of Bennington, Vermont to address issues of food insecurity. Beth Dixon will illustrate how to use the methodology of narrative ethics to make visible structural injustices about food insecurity in order to advocate for changes in policy, laws, and practices. Meredith E. Abarca will present a digital archive open source project that she is creating, El Paso Food Voices, based on gathering food oral stories from El Paso, Texas residents. She’ll highlight some of these stories to illustrate micro levels of social transformation taking place within private and public ‘cocinas.’