CBL:Env/Food Justice Movements

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This seminar draws on a range of interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives in examining the similarities and differences between the environmental justice movement (EJM) and the food justice movement (FJM). EJM has a slightly longer history in the United States than FJM, and the two movements share notable similarities but with some key differences in terms of how they define and aim to resolve the problems of environmental injustice or food injustice. We begin by situating the emergence of EJM and FJM in the context of broader environmental and alternative food movements, both domestically and globally, and explore how various theoretical frameworks of the movements analyze environmental and food issues through the lens of social justice and human inequality, specifically on categories of race, class, and more recently, gender. Over the course of the semester we will examine various real cases of environmental and food justice activism, including both successful and failed attempts, and discuss each case in relation to the theoretical frameworks introduced in the seminar through the assigned readings and the lecture.