Farmers, Eaters, Organizers

Farmers, Eaters, and Organizers: Agricultural Life in Literature w/CBL - This class explores what the public intellectuals Ramachandra Guha and Joan Martinez Alier calls "the environmentalism of the poor." How do rural workers around the world sustain life and resist harm in the era of climate catastrophes, corporate monopoly, labor exploitation, and forced migration? How do creative expressions in poetry, fiction, filmmaking, and grassroots organizing give voice to the people, and how do their voices come back to us as consumers, food bloggers, and eaters? How might collective consciousness emerge out of our engagement with questions of responsibility and pleasure when it comes to earth-based consumption? Readings will be drawn from pastoral poetry across the ages and from fictions featuring agricultural labor. Alongside, you will work in local farms and other organizations related to food systems and land sovereignty. This course fulfills the FYS requirement and HU general education requirements. This course includes an experiential learning component known as Community-Based Learning (CBL). Students in CBL courses actively engage in their learning by spending two hours a week outside of class time, across the semester, in a placement with one of our community partners. Students then connect their community placement experiences with course content.