Latinx Foodways
In 2020 the Humanities Action Lab was awarded a generous grant of $500,000 over three years from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish Climates of Inequality and the COVID Crisis: Building Leadership at Minority Serving Institutions to foster public humanities climate leaders in a world changed by COVID-19. Dr. Cabrera was selected for the grant of first cohort leaders from five universities to steer this project. Read More »
The Latino Cultural Center (LCC) in collaboration with Alianza Americas and LVEJO developed a project called Latinx Foodways: Stories and Recipes Linking Social and Environmental Justice.
Students in Cabrera’s Fall 2021 ECJ course used oral histories from community members and class discussions to address two main questions:
- How is the relationship between environmental/climate justice with food traditions & cultural identity manifesting in the stories shared by community members? and
- How is this relationship also linked to issues of land & food justice, im/migration, labor, health & COVID-19?
The students used ethnographic methods to collect stories in two story circles with community members from Alianza Americas/Centro San Bonifacio and a cooking demonstration session held at LVEJO/Semillas de Justicia Garden.
ECJ Student Final Projects Heading link
ECJ students designed four types of communication tools to frame their own storytelling around the oral histories, class readings, and discussions.