The Brown Center invites you to our lunch and learn on Friday, September 23rd at 12:00 PM in Lee’s Garage. Please sign up below, food and seats are limited.
Sarah Cramer
Sarah Cramer, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Systems in the Department of Environmental Science and Studies. She teaches courses on food studies, race/class/gender in the food system, and school food.
Luca Molnar
Luca Molnar, MFA, is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art in Stetson’s Creative Arts Department. The Rinker Global Scholars program was her first opportunity to travel abroad with students. Her teaching centers on painting, painting in the expanded field, and the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary art practices.
Abstract
The title of this presentation pulls from contemporary artist Jenny Holzer’s text-based work, which highlights the delicate balances at play in interconnected, global systems. In this presentation, we will report on a similarly named interdisciplinary course that we proposed, developed, and taught in spring 2022. As part of the course, we took 19 undergraduate students to Venice, Italy, for an immersive 10-day study abroad trip, the itinerary for which was constructed entirely around three themes – globalization, contemporary art, and food studies. This wide-ranging itinerary included stops such as the headquarters of the Venice Biennale, various contemporary art galleries and activist spaces, and a family farm specializing in polenta corn varieties registered with the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. The class demonstrated that food and art, though seemingly disparate, are delicately interconnected in our globalized world, and that Venice provides an ideal case study for examining and understanding myriad contemporary systems and crises.