A Sarah Lawrence College Lecture Series
Co-sponsored by the Programs in Environmental Studies and
Science, Technology, and Society
All presentations are in the Esther Raushenbush Library Pillow Room. Call
or e-mail College Events for more information (grantg@slc.edu or 914-395-2412)
Marion Nestle
Friday, September 20, 2002 12:30 p.m.
Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
Marion Nestle, professor and chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food
Studies at New York University since 1988, studies the scientific, social,
cultural and economic factors that influence the development, implementation
and acceptance of federal dietary guidance policies. She has been a member
of the Food and Drug Administration's Food Advisory Committee and Science
Board, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines Advisory
Committee, and the American Cancer Society committee that issues dietary
guidelines for cancer prevention. Her book Food Politics: How the Food
Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (University of California Press)
was published in 2002. Another, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and
Bioterrorism, will be published by University of California Press next
spring.
Eric Schlosser
Monday, October 14, 2002 7:00 p.m.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Eric Schlosser has been investigating the fast food industry for many years.
In 1998, his two-part article on the subject in Rolling Stone generated a
tremendous outpouring of reader comment. A correspondent for The Atlantic
Monthly since 1996, Schlosser has also contributed to The New Yorker. He won
National Magazine Awards for his articles "Reefer Madness" and "Marijuana
and the Law," and he has been nominated for several other National Magazine
Awards and for the Loeb Award for business journalism.
Judith A. Carney
Friday, November 1, 2002 12:30 p.m.
The Role of the Enslaved in Carolina Rice History
Judith A. Carney, a professor of geography at UCLA, is currently studying
ethnobotanical knowledge systems brought by enslaved Africans to the
Americas. In exploring the cultivation of rice in colonial South Carolina,
Carney attributes the crop's success to techniques that originated in West
Africa's indigenous rice area, a broad region from Senegal to Liberia and
inland to Mali. Her book Black Rice was published by Harvard University
Press in 2001.
Mark Ritchie
Friday, February 21, 2003 12:30 p.m.
Beyond Sustenance: Farm Organizing from the Local to the Global
Mark Ritchie is president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,
a Minneapolis-based research and advocacy organization for farmers and rural
communities and their ecosystems worldwide. Under the influence of
globalization, both farmers and consumers have increasingly moved to new,
transnational forms of organizing. This globalization "from below"
has
profound implications for the land, food security and food safety. This
lecture will look at the evolution of the food system at the global level
and at the activities of farmers and others toward building a sustainable
rural future, in the U.S. and around the world.
Martha Crouch
Friday, April 4, 2003 12:30 p.m.
From Golden Rice to Terminator Technology: The Problems with Genetic
Engineering in Agriculture
In the last seven years, genetically engineered crops have been planted on
tens of millions of acres in the United States. More than half of the foods
sold in a typical supermarket contain components derived from engineered
plants. What are the consequences for our health and environment of this
rapid and extensive change in agriculture? Martha Crouch trained as a
molecular biologist at Yale in the 1970s. In the early 1990s she closed her
plant genetics lab and began speaking and writing about the role of genetic
engineering in sustainable agriculture. She taught "The Biology of Food"
at
Indiana University until last year, and now consults for activist groups.
Her talk will address the instability created by the imposition of
biotechnology on agro-ecosystems.
Anne R. Kapuscinski
Friday, April 11, 2003 12:30 p.m.
Pursuing Science's New Social Contract: Salmon, Biotechnology and the
Safety-First Initiative
Anne R. Kapuscinski, a professor of fisheries and of conservation biology at
the University of Minnesota, is an international authority on biosafety
policies and science, ecological effects of genetically engineered
organisms, and genetically engineered fish and other marine organisms. The
founding director of the Institute for Social, Economic and Ecological
Sustainability, and a specialist in biotechnology and aquaculture, she
studies the ecological risks of genetically engineered fish and the policies
and practices of sustainable aquaculture.