Food, Health and Climate Change: Food Stories
As part of Humanities Week, join the Humanities Lab and the Food, Health and Climate Change Lab for a mid-morning food exploration of food stories through storytelling, research and immersion. Listen as students trace the history of one ingredient of food through its agriculture roots, share the ethnographic history of the ingredient considering literature and film as resources and detail how the ingredients make their way from farm to table. Interact with students from ASU's Environmental Humanities group, Climbing Vines, and learn how environmental humanities collaborations including the Environmental Humanities Initiative at ASU and the College of Global Futures are collaborating towards equitable food futures. We invite you to use all of your senses in this immersive auditory, visual, taste and smell experience. Pre-registration is preferred, all are welcome.
About the Food, Health and Climate Change Lab: The human brain has always been highly tuned towards narratives for making sense of the world around us. Our stories and culture around food, consciously and unconsciously influence what we eat, which in turn, impacts our health as well as the health of the planet. Yet, scientific studies of food systems specifically, within the field of economics rarely take into account the critical role that narratives play in the design and functioning of our food system. On the other hand, humanities-based perspectives on food systems often fall short of a complete understanding of the economic underpinnings of how the food system has evolved and how it functions. This Lab will explore how the intersections between the environmental humanities, narratives and economics inform us about the connections between food systems, climate change, and the health of humans and the planet. As a final deliverable for the course, students will work with food system stakeholders to develop alternative visions of the future of food, and explore the narratives, policies and actions needed to get us there.
Learn more about the Lab HERE.
About the Humanities Lab: The Humanities Lab is an inquiry-driven social change incubator designed to offer students new ways of knowing, doing and being. All Lab courses focus on today’s most pressing social challenges and engage students in team-based, action-oriented, project-centered learning in collaboration with instructional faculty, embedded university librarians, and community consultants on and off campus. Learning is activated by students who pose questions, conduct transdisciplinary collaborative research, follow up on research-informed leads, innovate possibilities for positive change and ultimately develop public-facing impact outcomes designed to better our collective future.
Read more about the Humanities Lab HERE.
About Climbing Vines: Climbing Vines is an interdisciplinary, research-oriented club for students with interests in the humanities, sustainability and ecology. Students will learn how to navigate the process of applying for grants, publishing and research from faculty involved in the fields of the Environmental Humanities, Ecology-related Studies and Sustainability Sciences. Climbing Vines creates a communal space for students from across multiple disciplines to engage in collaborative discussions and research projects throughout the year to explore our place as humans in relation to the environment and other species in hopes of promoting and preserving the wellbeing of the current and future generations of life.
Read more about Climbing Vines HERE.