Too Many P’s? Personal, Political, Publics and Potatoes

April 5, 2012
2:00-5:00 PM
Oakes Mural Room

Join us for a spirited conversation about the politics of food and kinship—amongst other world-changing matters. At this Science & Justice Working Group event, Ruth Ozeki will read from her novel, All Over Creation, joined at the table by Nancy Chen (Anthropology), Julie Guthman Community Studies) and Steve Gliessman (Environmental Studies). Joan Haran (Cesagen at Cardiff University) will host this feast of ideas.

There is a place set for you at the table, so please come along. We will talk about public engagement with agricultural technology, genetic modification of crops, non-violent direct action and the creative use of generative metaphors. We will tease out some relationships between genes, gender and genre along the way, and consider how fiction can help us reimagine and reconfigure food systems.

RUTH OZEKI is a filmmaker, novelist, and novice Zen Buddhist priest. Her award-winning novels, My Year of Meats and All Over Creation, both New York Times Notable Books, have garnered international critical acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, environmental politics and global popular culture into unique hybrid narrative forms. Ruth worked in commercial television and media production, including low budget horror, for over a decade, and her independent films have shown at Sundance and on PBS. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of anthologies, magazines and newspapers, and she has taught and lectured at universities and colleges around the world. A long-time meditator, Ruth was ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in 2010. She and her husband, environmental artist Oliver Kellhammer, divide their time between New York and Cortes Island, B.C.. Her new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, will be published by Viking Penguin in 2013. Her website is www.ruthozeki.com.

This event is Co-Sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology and Environmental Studies, the Food Systems Working Group, and Measure 43.