Professor Patrizia La Trecchia
(University of South Florida)
Keynote address:
Decolonizing Food: Food Justice and the Environmental Humanities
Friday 4th November 2022, Charbonnel Lounge, 81 St Mary Street, Toronto (University of Toronto)
Prof. La Trecchia’s keynote delves into her research and her teaching that aim to bridge the environmental humanities with political ecologies of food. This approach connects food to its political and ecological implications acknowledging the dynamics that reproduce practices of agroextractivism and injustice within the food system.
Patrizia La Trecchia is Associate Professor at the University of South Florida, where she directs the Italian Program and the Environmental Humanities Initiative. She is a cultural studies and film scholar who works in critical food studies and environmental humanities.
She is the author of two textbooks and the monograph Uno sguardo a Sud. Vent’anni di movimenti, storie, conflitti e trasformazioni nella città di Napoli (2013) that was the first study to analyze the city of Naples in a postcolonial and transnational perspective. Her forthcoming monograph Foodscapes of Resistance and Resilience in Italy: Visual Politics of Food Justice is under contract with Routledge. A second monograph on the colonial divide between the Global North and the Global South is under contract with Palgrave.
Professor Fabio Parasecoli
(New York University)
Keynote address:
Food and Politics in Italy: History and Current Issues
Saturday 5th November 2022, Alumni Hall 400, 121 St Joseph Street, Toronto (University of Toronto)
From the polenta parties to the controversies around the chicken lasagna at the Vatican, food is frequently entangled in contemporary Italian politics and in civil society debates ranging from economic development to cultural identity and migrations. However, this is not a new phenomenon. Food has played a relevant role in shaping Italian national and local identities since the unification of the country, a process that some argue is not concluded yet. Furthermore, while Italian governments and politicians have often leveraged food as a way to control the population, they have also held accountable when food was scarce, of low quality, or even toxic. This talk will explore the historical background of these dynamics and their current manifestations.
Fabio Parasecoli is Professor of Food Studies in the Nutrition and Food Studies Department at New York University, researching the cultural politics of food in cultural heritage, media, and design. Recent books include Knowing Where It Comes From: Labeling Traditional Foods to Compete in a Global Market (2017), Food (2019), Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities (2021, coedited with Mateusz Halawa), and Gastronativsm: Food, Identity, Politics (2022).