Greetings all! It’s the end of another week! Here are some news and notes:
Faculty News:
I’m really enjoying making these kinds of announcements: Congratulations to Valerie De Leon, who was just awarded National Science Foundation Grant to study Cranial Base Development in Primates!
SfAA News:
Students: For those of you planning to attend the Society for Applied Anthropology meetings in Portland, OR (March ), consider applying for one of the numerous awards available to help with travel costs to the conference. The most prestigious of these in the Peter K. New award (find the announcement here), but there are many others that are worth checking out and applying for if your research is a good fit. Check the deadlines, as they vary.
Food Insecurity, Race, and Racism SfAA Panel:
Our own Dalila D’Ingeo is organizing a panel at SfAA, as follows.
The Disappearance of Race and Racism from Research on Food Insecurity
During the past 20 years, the literature on food insecurity has proliferated. While the expression ‘the new face of hunger’ addresses food insecurity as an issue that crosscuts American society, it disregards the disproportionate impact it has on Black Americans. In these contexts, food insecurity is a consolidate phenomenon, with a history, and a legacy. Its development is intertwined with episodes of violence and oppression that have impoverished and segregated Black communities for centuries. Existing literature tends to focus on proximal causes, such as lack of access to fresh food, rather than critically historicizing the genealogy of food insecurity and the way it has impacted Black Americans across generations. As scholars using critical race theory discuss, the history of food insecurity is connected to systemic racism and racist ideologies. Discriminatory policies today, and in the past, have segregated Black communities from wealth and resources and many families, especially in the South, have seen their lands expropriated and their properties violated. In this session, we want to investigate how the history of race and racism is embodied in today’s food practices and connected to the experiences of the food insecure themselves. How is food insecurity framed in the narratives and memories of Black communities? How is access to healthy food valued in lives profoundly affected by poverty and discrimination? What are the coping strategies that communities adopt to overcome food insecurity? Do these actions have a legacy in the US racialized history? We envision a session in which scholars and practitioners critically reflect on the adverse impact of food insecurity on the health and well-being of Black individuals and communities, examining current evidence as connected to issues of social justice and historical events. In addition, we aim to stimulate a conversation on the causes of this “disappearance” in the academic debate and propose ways to address it theoretically, methodologically, and with effective actions.
Interested in participating? Please send your abstract (approximately 250 words) and short bio to Dalila D’Ingeo (dalidingeo@ufl.edu) and Laura Kihlstrom (lkihlstrom@mail.usf.edu) by September 30.
Upcoming Events:
Anthropology (with several other department and programs) is sponsoring the Queen Quet, Gullah/Geechee Nation Save the Seas World Tour, on September 25. See the poster below:
Peter Collings
Jessie Ball duPont-Magid Term Professor
Interim Chair
Department of Anthropology
University of Florida