Chicago Area Food Studies

This talk focuses on one Black Nationalist religion’s farming practices in the rural South.  Specifically, I will explore how spirituality and black liberation informs this group’s understanding of sustainable agriculture.  I argue that through their farming practices, they are creating a geography of hope for black people.

McCutcheon’s post-doctoral project is “Food, Race and Space in an African American Land Ethic.”

During this fellowship year I will continue to develop the concept of an African American Land Ethic (AALE), specifically exploring the connection between urban and rural spaces, how hunger and emergency food fit into an AALE, and the connection between spirituality and the land,” said McCutcheon. “I argue that an AALE has meanings that are shaped both by historical and present-day experiences of African Americans with racialized physical and social landscapes. The lack of recognition of an AALE results, in part, from broader misinterpretations of the relationship between African American people and the environment.

The components of an AALE are not just separate principles that individual black farmers and food cultivators practice on a daily basis. Instead, they are tied to larger racial projects that are both a reflection of, and a response to, racial supremacy. I will continue my work with black religious food programs, with a range of racial and religious ideologies, all of which profess a spiritual and, I would argue, racialized commitment to feeding black people safe and healthy food. The commonalities and differences in these food programs reflect the complexity of an AALE. I will extend my research beyond the southern portion of the United States to black religious food programs in Chicago, many of which have an intimate spatial connection with the South.

Priscilla McCutcheon is an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut with joint appointments in the Department of Geography and the Institute for African American Studies. Her primary research focus is on the intersection of agriculture/food, racial identity formation, and religion. In her dissertation, “‘Heaven on Earth’: Race, Food and Space in Black Religious Food Programs,” McCutcheon examines racial identity formation and place-making through the lens of three black religious food programs that range from a black Protestant church’s emergency food program to a black nationalist Christian organization that is farming over 4,000 acres of land. During her graduate studies, her passion for food and agriculture never waned and she worked with community food groups throughout the South and The Virgin Islands on best practices in their food programs. During her free time, McCutcheon enjoys everything about food including growing her own food, cooking, watching cooking shows, and trying new restaurants. She earned her PhD from the University of Georgia in Geography and a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Georgia.

Virginia D. Nazarea
Professor,  Department of Anthropology Director,  Ethnoecology/
Biodiversity Laboratory Baldwin Hall, University of Georgia

Why do seedsaving and heirloom gardening persist in modernity, and why do they seem to be spreading? Drawing on research on ole’ timey and immigrant gardeners in the American South as well as on indigenous farmers recuperating and reintegrating native potatoes in the Peruvian Andes, this presentation will explore biodiversity conservation as a social movement of a different sort.

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COOK, EAT, MAN, WOMAN – COMPETING IDEAS TO FEED THE WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

• Date(s): Thursday, 11/13 4:00 PM to Thursday, 11/13 6:00 PM
• Address: 750 South Halsted Street
• Location: Chicago, Illinois
• Contact: Linda Vavra
• Email: huminst@uic.edu
• Website: huminst.uic.edu
• Phone: (312) 996-6352