Food – Fall 2016

Food feels universal; we all consume it daily. The politics, health, culture, and economics of food, however, vary greatly across and within place and time in ways that have powerful social and environmental consequences. Our Fall 2016 Clarke Forum theme will examine food access, quality, and sustainability as they have been shaped by factors like class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Approaching food from diverse, critical perspectives, this semester’s events will draw on the expertise of researchers, activists, community groups, artists, writers, governmental agencies, chefs, cooks, and seminar participants. Together we will explore the historical roots of inequalities related to food, demonstrate how they manifest themselves in culture, politics, human health, and the environment, and suggest how best to confront them. In doing so we will learn from one another and will inform and stimulate broader campus and community discussions about food.

Sean Sherman

SHERMAN FINAL POSTERFounder, The Sioux Chef

The Evolution of Indigenous Food Systems of North America

Friday, November 3, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 4:30 p.m.

Committed to revitalizing Native American cuisine, Sherman will share his  research uncovering the foundations of the Indigenous food systems. There will be a book sale and signing following the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the the Office of Dean & Provost – Neil Weissman, the Center for Sustainability Education, the Department of Anthropology & Archaeology, American Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Food Studies Program.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

bowmanSean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, has been cooking in Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana for the last 27 years.  In the last few years, his main culinary focus has been on the revitalizing of indigenous foods systems in a modern culinary context.  Sean has studied on his own extensively to determine the foundations of these food systems which include the knowledge of Native American farming techniques, wild food usage and harvesting, land stewardship, salt and sugar making, hunting and fishing, food preservation, Native American migrational histories, elemental cooking techniques, and Native culture Read more

Winona LaDuke – “Morgan Lecturer”

Final LaDuke PosterExecutive Director, Honor the Earth

Morgan Lecture

The Next Energy Economy: Grassroots Strategies to Mitigate Global Climate Change & How We Move Ahead

Wednesday, March 22, 2017 
(Rescheduled from Fall 2016)
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Native American writer and activist Winona LaDuke will draw from her grassroots experiences, including the #NoDAPL movement at Standing Rock, to explore how we can move forward to create a new energy economy. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Morgan Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education, the Churchill Fund and the Departments of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Studies, American Studies, Anthropology & Archaeology and Political Science.  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s  Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and part of the Clarke Forum’s Fall 2016 semester theme, Food.

laduke winonaBiography (provided by the speaker)

Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Read more

James McWilliams

McWilliams PosterTexas State University

Bringing Animal Welfare to 21st Century Agriculture

Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Stern Great Room, 7 p.m.

McWilliams will explore the many ways in which alternatives to industrial animal agriculture–pastured, cage-free, and grass fed systems, for example–do not live up to their promised welfare reforms, before outlining a future agricultural system that can more effectively attend to animal welfare concerns.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food.

imgresBiography (provided by the speaker)

James McWilliams is an historian and writer based in Austin, Texas. His books include The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals (Thomas Dunne Books), Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown) and A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press). His writing has appeared in The Paris Review daily, The New Yorker.com, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, The American Scholar, Texas Monthly, and The Atlantic. He writes Read more

Psyche Williams-Forson

Forson posterUniversity of Maryland College Park

Eating While Black: A Case Study on Food Shaming and Policing

Monday, October 10, 2016
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.

This talk will examine how the current changing food world affects and is affected by African American people. In particular, it will focus on how the legacies of surveillance that surround black people have now extended to our food cultures.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education, the Departments of Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology & Archaeology, English, Environmental Studies and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food.

Biography (provided by the speaker)Psyche

Psyche Williams-Forson is associate professor and chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. She is an affiliate faculty member of the women’s studies and African American studies departments, as well as anthropology/archaeology. She is an associate editor of Food and Foodways journal, co-editor (with Carole Counihan) of Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World (Routledge 2011) and author of Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (2006).  Her new book Read more

Raj Patel

Patel PosterUniversity of Texas, Austin and Rhodes University, South Africa

The World That Food Made

Thursday, September 8, 2016
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

We hear a great deal about the food system, about how it’s broken or – indeed – that it’s working exactly as it ought. But it’s not exactly clear what that system is. Once you learn to think systemically, it becomes clear that the most important things the food system has made are things you can’t eat.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, First Year Seminars, the Center for Sustainability Education and the Departments of Environmental Studies, International Business & Management, Anthropology & Archaeology, Biology and the Program in Policy Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food and the Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a senior research associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes Read more