The Department of Geography Colloquium Series presents Dr. Judith Carney on “Africa’s Food Legacy in the Atlantic World” on Thursday, Sept. 28, at 7 p.m. in the Walter Hall Rotunda. Refreshments begin at 6:30 p.m.
Judith Carney
Carney is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research centers on African ecology and development, food security, gender and agrarian change, and African contributions to New World environmental history. She is the author of Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas and In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World.
Abstract: This talk examines the ways that African food crops circulated in the tropical Atlantic world between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Emphasis is on their role in the transatlantic slave trade, the means by which they arrived in the New World, and the sites where the species were established in plantation societies. An examination of the African components of the Columbian Exchange draws attention to the significance of food for the commerce in, and survival of, enslaved human beings. It additionally underscores the agency of slaves in instigating the cultivation of many African dietary staples and in shaping the foodways of former plantation societies.
Sponsors for this event include: Phi Beta Kappa, Lambda of Ohio, College of Arts & Sciences, Departments of Geography, History, Modern Languages, Latin American Studies, African Studies, Multicultural Center, Black Student Cultural Programming Board, and Food Studies.
Comments