Beautifully Human and Very Complicated: Telling Stories of
Food and Race
Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson is Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. She examines the lives of African Americans living in the United States from the late 19th century to the present. In addition to several journal articles and book chapters, her work on material culture and food has been published in her books, Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World and the award-winning Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, & Power. Her new book, Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America is forthcoming in spring 2022.
Queers Saving the Planetary Ecosystem: A Short History of
Earthworms
Yvette Abrahams holds a PhD in economic history from UCT, and has consulted for decades for NGOs and government. A former Commissioner for Gender quality, she steered programmes on poverty, energy and climate change. Dr Abrahams has also been an active academic, and has worked as a lecturer and researcher both in South Africa and the United states. She has published widely, with her best-known work being studies of Sara Baartman, research on lesbians and queer theory/politics and writings on gender and climate change. Dr Abrahams was one of the first feminists to address gender, feminism and climate change in South Africa. She has also been an organic farmer for several years, and currently runs a small business on her smallholding just outside Cape Town for producing carbo-neutral organic soap and body products.
Food. Film. Home: a filmmaker reflects
Shelley Barry is one of South Africa’s most innovative documentary film-makers, the winner of numerous awards and has had her films screened at festivals around the world. Currently a lecturer in documentary and experimental film and national cinema at the University of Johannesburg, she is also the director of her own company Twospinningwheels. Shelley Barry is well-known for her trilogy, Whole a Trinity of Being(2005), Diaries of a Dissident Poet (2014) and Here (2019). Barry’s films are distinctive in focusing on what is usually not seen or thought about. Food and eating – within human beings complex lives – is one example of this. This session will involve a screening of aspects of Barry’s work focusing on food, and will be followed by discussion.