Abstract
This study focuses on how food and table fellowship has become the anchor for sustainable development work and interfaith dialogue at a university inhabiting space within a politically polarized, economically disadvantaged place in the rural Bible Belt of the USA. This showcase offers that a new community-engaged course, Food and Faith (REL 140), and food security programming offered by Wingate University’s The Collaborative for the Common Good (CCG) have become successful because they both are grounded in a deep appreciation of how campus culture is a manifestation of the diverse, transient, human bodies who live and learn at Wingate as well as the long arc of the particular history, culture, politics, economics, and ecology of the place where these bodies are co-dwelling in rural America. We demonstrate that when place matters, innovative, high-impact community-engaged courses and food security programming can be re-imagined and successfully implemented. Participants will understand how a Food and Faith (REL 140) feeds, and is fed by, food security infrastructure on and off campus including a campus-community Farmers Market and an on-campus Free Store. Space will be made for a lively discussion of how other educational contexts can model what is being achieved at Wingate University and prior to this showcase of recent research findings, participants can become part of a knowledge democracy concerning all CCG programming (See: https://www.wingate.edu/life-at-wingate/common-good/projects) and the inaugural Food and Faith Class (https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1674739770/wingateedu/tzjlwgextomq6xzo72as/REL140WhitePaper2.pdf).
Presenters
Catherine WrightAssociate Professor; Executive Director of The Collaborative for the Common Good, Religion; Philosophy, Wingate University, North Carolina, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Community Engaged Research, Pedagogy, Food Systems, Politics, Interdisciplinary, Sustainability, Interfaith
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