From King Cotton to Queen Sugar
Africans were brought to the US not only for their labor, but for their valuable agricultural knowledge and skills. African Americans have provided the foundation of our agricultural system through labor, cultural knowledge, and emotional and psychological sacrifice. A significant part of this foundation is forgotten, silenced, and ignored. This course aims to explore the legacy and contributions of Black farmers to the wealth, agricultural knowledge, and culture of the US as a whole and to African American communities in particular. Along side we will unravel the interconnected formation of racism, capitalism, and the industrial food system and how, in response, African Americans have created alternative food systems and agrarian philosophies. This course will look at both historic and contemporary practices and include field trips to local farms.
Visual Representation
This course is an introduction to visual culture with a focus on representation. There are several lenses through which to approach the visual world, and this course draws strongly on Visual Anthropology as its analytical approach. This course aims to provide a critical framework for “reading” visual representations starting with images of “othering” and moving to the practice of self representation. The goals of this course are to 1. develop a visual literacy that can be applied to any visual media; 2. introduce students to arguments and debates over the politics and ethics of representation within the field of visual anthropology; 3. provide a space for the practice of visual representation through a digital storytelling project.
Environmental Justice
This course begins with the premise that all people have a right to live in a clean environment free from hazardous pollution or contamination, and to the natural resources necessary to sustain health and livelihood. With this as the starting point, we will question why and through what social, political, and economic processes some people are denied these rights. We will explore the systems and social relations of production and power that create these outcomes and the responses by social movements, communities, and public policy efforts that work to secure these rights for all people. In this course we will cover the concept of environmental justice generally, and the history of the environmental justice movement in particular as it has emerged over the past decades in the US. We will explore specific case studies in the South and in the US, and briefly touch on international issues and perspectives. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of environmental justice offering political, economic, social, and cultural perspectives on how environmental issues interact with race, class, gender, and ability. Students will be encouraged to investigate how issues of environmental justice affect places of importance to them, such as their hometowns or places of residence. This course requires active participation in discussions and critical assessments of the implications of environmental in/justice from both theoretical and practical standpoints.
Black Geographies
This course will explore the interconnected formation of race and space through the lens of food production, distribution, and consumption. The first part of the course will focus on the spatial flows of global food production and the role of land rights, beginning with the trans-Atlantic slave trade to current forms of contract farming and land grabbing. These global trends will be juxtaposed with the formation of specific localities, such as the plantation, freedom farms, chicken factories, and farm cooperatives, unraveling how each is simultaneously a site of production of the racist capitalist system and the site of resistance and cultural survival. The second section will look at the intersection of racial formation and food distribution with a particular focus on food deserts and food swamps. This section will outline the institutional forces that shape distribution inequality while also exploring the often overlooked forms of community wealth within food deserts. We will also assess the work of community gardens, their efforts (or failures) to engage community participation, and the assumptions of whiteness sometimes embedded within food activism. Students will work with and hear directly from local food organizers. The final section of this course will explore the cultural influence of tastes and food consumption. This section will trace the formation and transformation of food preferences over time and examine how consumption is used to define cultural, racial, and class norms. We will look at how food preferences and tastes demarcate places such as the home, a locale, or a region.
Development and Social Justice in the US South
Through this class, we will examine development challenges facing the US South. Although development is often something equated with developing countries, many of the challenges of inequity, economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and social capital exist in every country on earth. In this course, we will examine the history of how some of these challenges have been addressed in the US South as a region and in Atlanta in particular. We will also be visited by representatives from development organizations that work in and around the US South. As new citizens of Atlanta, applying what you learn over the next two years to development challenges here will provide you with case studies and context for wherever this work takes you next.