Center for Food in Community and Culture

Center News

Potato Patch Art Project Begins with Planting

University of Wisconsin – Green Bay Potato Patch Art Project 2008 C. Style and L. Smith Location: Outside UWGB Student Union near Little Campus Store window. This project originated as collaboration between Professors Chris Style (Arts & Visual Design) and Larry Smith (Social Change & Development). Both are members of the Center for Food in Community & Culture. Larry Smith planted the potatoes on June 17, 2008 with support and cooperation from UWGB Dean of Liberal Arts & Sciences Scott Furlong, Facilities Manager Paul Pinkston, Director of University Union Rick Warpinski, Student Government Association representative Brad Fischer and the Center for Food in Community & Culture while Professor Sarah Detweiler (Arts & Visual Design) photographed the planting process.

Larry Smith selecting potatoes for planting, photo by Sarah Detweiler

The project celebrates the United Nations’ declaration of 2008 as The International Year of the Potato http://www.potato2008.org/ for its extraordinary role in supporting human welfare since it was exported to the world from its roots in Peru in the sixteenth-century. The Potato Patch calls attention to issues of nutrition and sustainability as it demonstrates how easily potato power can turn lawn to garden. The potatoes will provide creative sustenance for Prof. Style and her students as they make potato prints, and feed the creative soul through photographic and drawn documentation of the potato patch to create a zine that will be placed in the new Cofrin Library Zine Collection (started by Sarah Detweiler and Stephan Perkins in spring 2008 and located on the 3rd floor). The potatoes may also be eaten. . . during a potato soup feast – a frugal repast sometime after harvest with the public invited.

Center Opening Features Lecture by Jack Kloppenburg on "Resolving the Omnivore's Dilemma: Eating Pleasurably and Sustainably in the 21st Century."

Jack Koppenburg lecture, photo by Christine Style

On Thursday, March 27 at 5:00 pm in Mary Ann Cofrin Hall 208, an overflow crowd heard Dr. Kloppenburg, Professor of Rural Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, describe his work promoting local and regional food production. His lecture was followed by a reception and brief presentation by Lynn Walter on why we developed the Center for Food in Community and Culture at the University of Wisconsin. >p. 2

At the opening reception, Christine Style presented a slide show of images of food and agriculture. You can see her work as a rather large pdf, by clicking here.

Anne Kok of the Center for Food in Community and Culture was suddenly taken from us in a car accident on Monday, February 4 on her way home to Sturgeon Bay. Anne's interest in food and community focused on food security issues in Brown County. Anne was Associate Professor and Chair of Social Work. Anne and her students conducted a food security survey of vulnerable populations in Brown County, Wisconsin in 1998, 1999, and again in 2004. Karen Early, Nutrition Educator at Brown County Cooperative Extension was her collaborator in these surveys, which were done under the auspices of the Brown County Food and Hunger Network. She will be missed by her family, many students, friends, and colleagues.

Aeron Haynie Develops New "Culture of Food" Courses Dr. Aeron Haynie was the first recipient of the Instructional Development Council's new Advanced Course Development Grant to develop a food studies course for the humanities. The course, "The Culture of Food," is being offered for the first time this fall. It will show how the humanities can be used to examine contemporary debates about scarcity, cultural difference, gender, ethnic identity... making important intellectual issues concrete and real to students, to "connect learning to life" in a very visceral way. The course is likely to include a service-learning component (a trip to a food pantry, for example). She is also offering a new freshman seminar on this same theme.

Peterson Thesis on Traditional Oneida Food Systems Last spring term, Diana L. Peterson completed her thesis, entitled "Three Sisters Gardening: Rejuvenating a Traditional Food System with the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin." Dr. Laurel Phoenix, a faculty associate of the Center, served as Peterson's major professor. This case study of ten community gardeners who raised a traditional Three Sisters garden for two growing seasons analyzes the sustainability of individual traditional community gardens. She concludes that this part of the Tsyunhehkw^ program, focusing on rejuvenating and preserving traditional agricultural practices, has been helpful in that regard.