Journal Articles and Essays in Edited Collections by Sarah Wald
This article draws on lessons from the Bracero Program to examine the problematic ideologies of r... more This article draws on lessons from the Bracero Program to examine the problematic ideologies of race and citizenship that circulate in the alternative food movement today. It argues that a worker-centered transnational solidarity movement will better address the inequities and vulnerabilities that farmworkers continue to face than the conscious consumerism of the alternative food movement with its racialized discourse of Jeffersonian agriculture and its neoliberal investment in anti-obesity rhetoric.
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Asian American Literature and the Environment. Eds. Lorna Fitzsimmons, Youngsuk Chae, and Bella Adams. , 2014
This chapter suggests the consequences of the contemporary food movement’s privileging of whitene... more This chapter suggests the consequences of the contemporary food movement’s privileging of whiteness and land ownership through a consideration of Japanese American author Hisaye Yamamoto as a radical agrarian. I argue that Yamamoto’s fiction implicitly points to Catholic Worker ideals of collective land ownership and the merging of the scholarly life with manual labor as possible solutions to the psychological and physical violence she depicts, indicating some of the reasons that the Catholic Worker call to cultivation appealed to her. Yet, comparing Yamamoto’s short fiction to other Catholic Worker texts also reveals the unrecognized privilege at work in Catholic Worker agrarianism and suggests some of the difficulties Catholic Workers, including Yamamoto, encountered in putting their ideals into practice. Yamamoto’s nuanced reflections on racialized and gendered labor and property relations reveal the impossibility of contemporary pastoral fantasies to offer just food solutions and convey the need for an intersectional approach to U.S. racial histories within the sustainable food movement.
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Western American Literature , Jun 2013
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The Jeffersonian narratives about food and farming that dominate the food movement in the United ... more The Jeffersonian narratives about food and farming that dominate the food movement in the United States too often obscure immigrants’ crucial role in US food production. This paper examines the narrative strategies that reveal and obscure immigrant workers’ connections to food by analyzing two popular texts about food and farming: Michael Pollan’s non-fictional The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) and Helena María Viramontes’s novel Under the Feet of Jesus (1995). Pollan’s focus on the relationship between farm and fork often erases workers’ visibility in the systems he describes. Viramontes’s novel offers a useful corrective as the text imagines the lives of farm workers, emphasizing the workers’ humanity to oppose the criminalization of farm workers. Reading the two works side-by-side suggests the limitations of a contemporary food movement oriented too heavily towards the consumer and asserts the possibilities of a food justice movement emphasizing workers’ and immigrants’ rights.
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On-Line Teaching Guide to The Colors of Nature. Milkweed Press. , 2013
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Syllabi by Sarah Wald
Latinx literature and culture sit at the cutting-edge of contemporary environmental thought. Thi... more Latinx literature and culture sit at the cutting-edge of contemporary environmental thought. This class examines the intertwining of social and environmental justice in contemporary Latinx literature and cultural production, including fiction, film, and visual arts. We particularly attend to environmental justice and to the forms of environmentalism that emerge from Chicana feminism.
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This course examines the various ways that nature is represented in U.S. popular culture. What ca... more This course examines the various ways that nature is represented in U.S. popular culture. What can advertisements, films, television, and video games teach us about the ways we imagine nature and the environment? What ideas about nature are conveyed by zoos, aquariums, and nature-oriented theme parks? Popular culture representations of nature tell us more than how we imagine nature and the environment. They also articulate and naturalize ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and ability. They present certain kinds of identities as natural and normative and other kinds of identities as unnatural or out of place in nature. We will examine the politics of identity and environment in depictions of SeaWorld, gay penguins, and Mother Earth. What is at stake in movies like Pocahontas, Avatar, and Moana? How are ideas about race and colonialism communicated in advertisements for the Discovery Channel and The Body Shop? We will explore the ways that representations of nature can at times justify existing relationships of power and privilege in society and the ways in which such representations may also at times contest those existing relationships of power and privilege. As part of this class, you will be responsible for contributing examples of popular culture to class discussion through your portfolio assignments. One of the aims of this class is to help you be a more critically and engaged reader of the popular culture that surrounds you. Learning Objectives Provide a working definition of popular culture and an explanation of what we gain from studying popular culture representations of nature and the environment. Analyze the depictions of nature and the environment in television shows, films, advertisements, video games, and other popular culture texts. Describe and provide examples of the way ideas about race, gender, ability, and sexuality are communicated and contested through depictions of nature and the environment. Communicate effectively through written and oral communication.
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Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the environment. Ecocritical... more Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the environment. Ecocritical inquiry takes many forms and is often interdisciplinary. In one emergent tributary of ecocriticism, scholars have engaged thoughtfully with the intersections between Race and Ethnic Studies and environmental literary criticism. These scholars have sought to understand how racial projects articulate with changing cultural constructions of nature. How have representations of nature, land, or the environment communicated particular ideas about race and racial categories? How have Black, Native American, Latina/o and Asian American writers navigated the mutually-constitutive construction of race and nature in their literary and cultural productions?
This course foregrounds scholarship by environmental literary and cultural critics that engages in an informed and extended manner with insights from U.S. Race and Ethnic Studies, including the fields of Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Native American Studies. This course will focus primarily on secondary sources. We will not be reading and discussing primary texts together as a class. Rather, we will work on identifying the ways scholarly texts mobilize close readings to participate in larger scholarly conversations. You will still be working on your close reading skills during this course by selecting a cultural or literary text on which you will focus throughout the quarter. You are encouraged to think of " text " broadly in this sense and to select a text that fits with your larger academic trajectory. It is required that you meet with me to discuss your chosen text and possible secondary sources by the end of the third week of the quarter. Your final project, which we will be working on throughout the course, will be a 10-12 page paper based on your chosen focal text. This paper should either a) contribute to a scholarly conversation/debate within ecocriticism's consideration of Race and Ethnic Studies through a reading of the text or b) contribute to scholarly understandings of the text through an application of an ecocritical approach to race and ethnicity. One of the academic professionalization skills we will be working on this quarter is identifying and communicating interventions. We will be paying particular attention to the types of interventions scholars make and the rhetorical moves they make to situate themselves in a larger conversation. This is also a technique students will be working on in their own writing and class presentations.
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We will explore issues related to food production and consumption through fictional and non-ficti... more We will explore issues related to food production and consumption through fictional and non-fictional representations of farmers and farmworkers in contemporary U.S. literature and culture. We will look at issues of food production, food distribution, and food access through the lens of agriculture, paying particular attention to issues of race, gender, and the environment. Learning Objectives
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Book Reviews and Encyclopedia Articles by Sarah Wald
Isis, 2009
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History: Reviews of New Books, 2007
... Recreation Area for sharing archival photographs. Several National Resource Conservation Serv... more ... Recreation Area for sharing archival photographs. Several National Resource Conservation Service em-ployees offered their time and knowledge: Corey Lytle, Rick Orr, and Jarrod Edmunds. Others who enriched this study ...
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Journal Articles and Essays in Edited Collections by Sarah Wald
Syllabi by Sarah Wald
This course foregrounds scholarship by environmental literary and cultural critics that engages in an informed and extended manner with insights from U.S. Race and Ethnic Studies, including the fields of Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Native American Studies. This course will focus primarily on secondary sources. We will not be reading and discussing primary texts together as a class. Rather, we will work on identifying the ways scholarly texts mobilize close readings to participate in larger scholarly conversations. You will still be working on your close reading skills during this course by selecting a cultural or literary text on which you will focus throughout the quarter. You are encouraged to think of " text " broadly in this sense and to select a text that fits with your larger academic trajectory. It is required that you meet with me to discuss your chosen text and possible secondary sources by the end of the third week of the quarter. Your final project, which we will be working on throughout the course, will be a 10-12 page paper based on your chosen focal text. This paper should either a) contribute to a scholarly conversation/debate within ecocriticism's consideration of Race and Ethnic Studies through a reading of the text or b) contribute to scholarly understandings of the text through an application of an ecocritical approach to race and ethnicity. One of the academic professionalization skills we will be working on this quarter is identifying and communicating interventions. We will be paying particular attention to the types of interventions scholars make and the rhetorical moves they make to situate themselves in a larger conversation. This is also a technique students will be working on in their own writing and class presentations.
Book Reviews and Encyclopedia Articles by Sarah Wald
This course foregrounds scholarship by environmental literary and cultural critics that engages in an informed and extended manner with insights from U.S. Race and Ethnic Studies, including the fields of Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Native American Studies. This course will focus primarily on secondary sources. We will not be reading and discussing primary texts together as a class. Rather, we will work on identifying the ways scholarly texts mobilize close readings to participate in larger scholarly conversations. You will still be working on your close reading skills during this course by selecting a cultural or literary text on which you will focus throughout the quarter. You are encouraged to think of " text " broadly in this sense and to select a text that fits with your larger academic trajectory. It is required that you meet with me to discuss your chosen text and possible secondary sources by the end of the third week of the quarter. Your final project, which we will be working on throughout the course, will be a 10-12 page paper based on your chosen focal text. This paper should either a) contribute to a scholarly conversation/debate within ecocriticism's consideration of Race and Ethnic Studies through a reading of the text or b) contribute to scholarly understandings of the text through an application of an ecocritical approach to race and ethnicity. One of the academic professionalization skills we will be working on this quarter is identifying and communicating interventions. We will be paying particular attention to the types of interventions scholars make and the rhetorical moves they make to situate themselves in a larger conversation. This is also a technique students will be working on in their own writing and class presentations.