On January 13th, The Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program presented a panel of experts discussing the relationship between food and gender studies. The panel was part of the ongoing Gender and Food Series, which features events throughout the academic year 2011, and is collaboration between the Williams College Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program and the Williams College Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
As academic disciplines, both Food Studies and Women and Genders studies cross many conceptual boundaries and defy categorization. Like women’s studies, the emerging field of food studies is interdisciplinary. Food practices and their representations can reveal the particularities of time, place, and culture, providing an excellent vehicle to contextualize women’s lives and experiences. Food practices and productions are gendered; through the act of eating we play out and give meaning to gender, family and community relationships. The panel explored how food – from community gardening to kitchen arts – can define ecology, empowerment and identity. The panel also looked at how food scarcity and insecurity creates identity, through dividing our communities and creating disparity in our nation’s health demographics.
Beyond academic perspectives, the panelists presented how they set their intellectual inquiries towards environmental justice and social change.
Some panelist highlights:
Karen Washington, Member of Garden of Happiness, La Familia Verde Garden Coalition; Just Food City Farms Trainer; President of the NYC Community Garden Coalition; co-recipient of the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, awarded by Michelle Obama for her work on the NY Botanical Garden’s Bronx Green-Up program.
Shannon Hayes, Ph.D. Author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, The Grassfed Gourmet, and The Farmer and the Grill; Co-owner, Sap Bush Hollow Farm, Warnerville, NY