A Food Geographer

Or maybe, a geographer of food. Sounds nice, eh?

My attempts to summarize my chosen area of study have enjoyed a wide range of success and failure over the past few years. There's the old standby, the definition from my department of "the study of the spatial organization of human activity and human interaction with the physical environment." I used to (and sometimes still do) rattle that one off with a matter-of-fact tone and a straight face (for some reason substituting 'distribution' for 'organization'), as if I am fulfilling the stuff of everyone's childhood dreams. But I have received enough blank stares, quizzical looks ("that's a real major?"), half-smiles of suspicion ("you're serious?"), and I-tentatively-think-I-get-it-but-don't-care-to-press-the-issue facial expressions to know that the old standby is not enough.

These days I usually proceed in a fashion similar to the following:
"I study human geography-it's the study of human activity and society, like, the distribution of our activities, in relation to the environment...it's somewhere between the social sciences and hard sciences, like, an interdisciplinary focus...yeah, it sounds broad, I know. You can study just about anything and call it human geography, like transportation systems, economic geography, urban planning, uh, and, lots of people go work for government agencies or as consultants...yeah, and I'm really interested in agriculture and how we get our food..."

Of course it is natural to get so many questions about such an obscure and inglorious field of study as mine--I would be wondering too if I wasn't the one studying it. Heck, I still have those what-the-bleep moments at times, and I don't feel at all like someone who is wrapping up 4 years of studying to be a human geographer. Looking through the lens of geography and environment and the above description of my major on the website, my classes and academic program have felt about as cohesive as wet sand drying in your hand in the sun. But that is the subject of another whole post, and probably a letter to BU too when this is all over. You can peek at my course list for the entire college career below.

However, I wasn't studying for 4 years to become a career or a specialist; I was studying to become JD.

That food/farming part at the end of the description of my studies, I added that within the last year and a half or so. (I found this great entry, in the online Encyclopedia of Food & Culture, on the geography of food; it neatly sums up the applicability of geographers to food studies.) That is something I am sure of, something that grounds me whenever I get waves of panic about not leaving school with 'marketable skills' or a job lined up for my favorite I-banking firm (did you know people, young people like students, have favorite I-banking companies? it boggles my mind, but it is true) or a clear sense of the direction my life will take in the next 5 or 10 years.

Whatever happens, I know that I want to devote part or all of my life to reconnecting people (including myself) with the landscapes that sustain us and with sources of healthy (in many senses) food. I daresay I might feel passionate about local food systems, sustainable agriculture, urban and peri-urban agriculture, and the many associated benefits these production systems can provide to people, communities, the environment, and our societies as a whole.

So yeah, it took a few years, but I feel I can say, finally, with confidence, in my last semester of undergraduate liberal arts studies, that I am a food geographer.


CAS CC101 Ancient World Hume 1
CAS CC105 Core Natural Science 1
CAS GE100 Intr Envron Science
CAS PS101 Gen Psychology

SPRG 08 CAS CC102 Core Humanit 2
CAS CC106 Core Nat Sci 2
CAS ID116 Africa Today
CAS LG212 4th Sem German

FALL 08 CAS CC201 Core Humanit 3
CAS EC101 Intro Microeconomics
CAS GE103 Economic Geography
CAS MA121 Calc I-Soc Sci

SPRG 09 CAS CC202 Core Humanit 4
CAS EC102 Intro Macroecon
CAS GE309 Envir Analysis
CAS MA213 Basic Stat&Prob

FALL 09 CAS GE250 Fate of Nations
CAS GE275 Intro Env Modelling
CAS GE356 Third World Development
CAS LA111 Hausa 1

SPRG 10 CAS HI384E N Afr History&Relig
CAS LY111E Modern Arabic 1
CAS LY112E Modern Arabic 2
CAS WS351E Women Islam&Pol

FALL 10 CAS GE302 Remote Sensing
CAS GE304 Sustainable Dev
CAS GE460 Resource Economics
CAS HI589 Hist Food Envir & Soc

SPRG 11 CAS GE492 Local Food Direct.study
CAS GE365 Intro to GIS
CAS GE394 Envir Hist Africa
CFA MU567 African drumming&dance
PDP DA179 Afro-Jazz

Stop Me if I Say Too Much

Tonight late I've been alone, and it's been going. Collaging on the scale of meters with thumbtacks. Representations, images, symbols, all past events, plenty memories,suspension indefinite.

Lights abound, the little fountain of rocks trying to keep pace. Do I need my fan tonight? The sideways deafening treescape ravenously illuminated two slumberfaces, thunderous call to rise and swing.

5 classes become four, one feels like more, hang the postcards outside your door.

Ease your mind, have a banana or two. Think through things, because you want to, always. Find a place where you can speak your mind, a community where you can live as one with yourself. Find the Fine Balance. Trust others, treat them kindly, for you will win more bees over with honey than vinegar.

Cooperate: learn from each other, and learn to work with each other. Exchange skills, recipes, tools, stories, lessons. scraps of life shared weave deep connections. Learn how to do more with less, how to save and invest, how to enjoy time away from screens.

Spend an hour looking at the faces of others, everyday. Discover the people around you and the world around you. Cherish it all, and guard it for all to come.

Nature's Repast: Histories of Food, Environment, and Society...HI 589. After the first day, it is already potential material for my 'best class at BU' award. The current leader is GE250 The Fate of Nations: Why Societies Succeed or Fail, from last fall...(if your class has a really cool name, it will be cool. It is BU law... But really, these two fit the formula.)

589 is an 11 or 12 person graduate seminar held weekly on Wednesday afternoons. We will first discuss and read environmental history, including the most excellent "Changes in the Land." This is Cronon's book, which, incidentally, I read in GE250, about the ecology of New England under the management of first Native Americans and then European colonists. Eventually we will talking about food as the apex of human and natural interactions, along with art and culture (and everything else?). It will be lots of reading and writing, but none of it will be busy work. Challenging, perhaps very challenging, it will indeed be.

-This is an excerpt from the song 'Jesus Christ' by Brand New:

"Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die
But I'm a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot
Or do I float through the ceiling

Or do I divide and pull apart
Because my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark
This ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?

I know you're coming in the night like a thief
But I've had some time, O Lord, to hone my lying technique
I know you think that I'm someone you can trust
But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up
So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try
I know you're coming for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories
We all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories
We all got wood and nails
And we sleep inside of this machine."

ps-I am in a great mood because I found out the last important class for my major, which I have managed to save until this coming semester, will indeed be taught...there were a couple of panic days there!