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Past readings

Spring 2010 schedule
  • Jan 29: Black farming
    • Priscilla McCutcheon, “Community Food Security ‘For Us, By Us’”
    • More on the Pigford case with Stephen Carpenter
  • Feb. 12: The construction of “fresh” (Jerry)
    • Readings from Fresh: A Perishable History by Susanne Freidberg
  • Feb. 26: Affect/Affective labor (Valentine, Ursula, Tracey, Slocum)
    • "Doing Shame" from Elspeth Probyn, Blush: Faces of Shame (2005, U of MN Press)
    • Introduction from Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects (2007, Duke UP)
    • Dowling, E. (2007). Producing the Dining Experience: Measure, Subjectivity and the Affective Worker. Ephemera, 7(1), 117-132.  
    • (Optional) Weeks, K. (2007). Life Within and Against Work: Affective Labor, Feminist Critique, and Post-Fordist Politics. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 7(1), 233-49.  
    • (Optional) Other selections from Steward, Ordinary Affects.
  • March 12 (last day before Spring Break): Reproductive labor (Tracey)
    • Introduction to Feeding the Family by Marjorie DeVault
    • Heidi Hartmann, "The Family as a Site of Struggle"
  • Spring Break: Food studies methods workshop 
  • March 26: Botany and politics (Slocum)
    • "Memory Dishes" and "The Africanization of Plantation Food Systems" from In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff
    • Clark, N. (2002). "The Demon Seed: Bioinvasion as the Unsettling of Environmental Cosmopolitanism" Theory, Culture, and Society, 19(1-2), 101-125.
  • April 9: Foodies (Schurman/Cadieux)
    • Introduction and Conclusion from Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Landscape by Shyon Baumann and Josee Johnston
  • [Talk] April 21: Flavors of Health and Remembrance: Practice and politics of wild vegetable gathering by Hmong Americans in the Upper Midwest @ Nolte Library
    • Marla Emery, Research Geographer with the USDA
    • Potluck at 6:30 following the talk
  • April 23: Post-socialist food systems (Jerry/Renata)
    • Selections from Food and Everyday Life in the Post Socialist World
  • May 7 (last day of spring classes): Planning meeting

Fall 2009
  • September 2 (Meeting from 10-11ish at Mapps): Discussion of the film series with the Bell Museum
  • September 18: Review of Valentine Cadieux's working paper, "Consuming production, producing sustainability: The fetish of production in local agri-food activism"
  • October 2: Review of Jerry Shannon's paper: "Must the Circle Be Unbroken?: Moving beyond the local to define difference in alternative food networks"
  • October 16: (Meeting from 1:45-3:15): Manuscript and visit from Lisa Heldke, Philosophy professor at Gustavus Adolphus College
  • October 30:
    • Tsing, A. (2009). Supply Chains and the Human Condition. Rethinking Marxism, 21, 148.
    • Optional: Moreton, B. (2009). To serve God and Wal-Mart : the making of Christian free enterprise. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. (selections).
  • November 13: Stephen Carpenter's piece on family farms and planning meeting for spring readings and possible film symposium
  • December 4: 
    • "'The Bread is Soft': Italian Foodways, American Abundance" from Hasia Diner's Hungering for America
    • ""'Chili Queens' and Checkered Tablecloths: Public Dining Cultures of Mexicans and Italians in the United States, 1880-1940 " Draft Manuscript from Jeffrey Pilcher and Donna Gabaccia
  • Friday, May 22 
    • Soper, K. (2008). ALTERNATIVE HEDONISM, CULTURAL THEORY AND THE ROLE OF AESTHETIC REVISIONING. Cultural Studies, 22(5), 567-587. doi: 10.1080/09502380802245829.  
    • Callon, M. "An Economy of Qualities"
Summer 2009
  • Friday, June 5
    • Introduction and Conclusion of A Housewife's Paradise by Tracey Deutsch
  • Friday, June 19, 1-2:30
    • Intro of Rachel Schurman's new book
  • Wednesday, July 8th, 12:45-2:15 
    • Henderson, G. (2004). 'Free' food, the local production of worth, and the circuit of decommodification: a value theory of the surplus. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22(4), 485-512. doi: 10.1068/d379.  
  • Monday, July 20, 2-3:30
    • Discussion of the Southeast Minnesota Food Project
  • Monday, August 17,12-3
    • Introduction from Jeffrey Pilcher's upcoming book, Planet Taco

Spring 2009
  • Jan. 30
    • Whatmore, S. and Thorne, L. (1997). Nourishing Networks: Alternative Geographies of Food. In Globalising Food, D. Goodman and M. Watts, ed. p. 287-304
  • Feb. 13
    • Cook, I. (2008). Geographies of Food: Mixing. Progress in Human Geography, 32(6), 821-833.
    • Slocum, R. (2009). Thinking Race through Corporeal Feminist Theory: divisions and intimacies at the Minneapolis Farmers' Market. Social and Cultural Geography, 9(8), 849-869.
  • Feb. 27
    • Pudup, Mary Beth. 2008. “It takes a garden: Cultivating citizen-subjects in organized garden projects.” Geoforum 39:1228-1240
    • Jarosz, Lucy. 2008. "The city in the country: Growing alternative food networks in Metropolitan areas." Journal of Rural Studies. 24:231-244
  • March 13--Including conference call with Mike Goodman
    • Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, Taking Back Taste
    • Mike Goodman, Towards Visceral Entanglements (forthcoming chapter)
  • April 10
    • Johnston, J. (2008). The citizen-consumer hybrid: ideological tensions and the case of Whole Foods Market. Theory and Society, 37(3), 229-270.
  • April 24--Including conference call with Julie Guthman
    • Guthman, J. (2008). Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice. Cultural Geographies, 15(4), 431-447
    • Guthman, J. (2007). Commentary on teaching food: Why I am fed up with Michael Pollan et al. Agriculture and Human Values, 24(2), 261-264.
    • One other piece of your choice
  • May 1
    • Meeting with the agriculture group in St. Paul--pieces on multifunctional agriculture and multidisciplinary work groups