Jayson Maurice Porter | Researching, Writing, and Teaching Black Environmental Histories and Ecologies of Diaspora – Sustainable Food Systems Initiative

Jayson Maurice Porter | Researching, Writing, and Teaching Black Environmental Histories and Ecologies of Diaspora

March 25, 2025

In this talk, Jayson Maurice Porter will center black environmental communication on three levels: researching, writing, and teaching. First, we’ll discuss inequality and unevenness in environmental narratives and how to analyze new archives and proxies of black and Afro-Indigenous environmental histories. Second, we’ll dive into methods and waves in black environmental writing today before finally sitting with the new models of teaching black environmental literacy and other forms of environmental literacy in today’s political climate and climate crisis.

Launched in 2017, Food Literacy for All is a community-academic partnership course at the University of Michigan supported by the Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, School for Environment & Sustainability, Program in the Environment, and CEW+ Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund. From January to April 2025, Food Literacy for All features guest speakers each Tuesday evening (6:30-8 PM EST) to address the challenges and opportunities of diverse food systems. The 2025 course is organized around the theme “Food and Care.” The course is co-facilitated by Dr. Bénédicte Boisseron (the course Faculty Instructor and UM Professor and Chair of Afroamerican & African Studies), Shiloh Maples (the course Community Co-Instructor and an Anishinaabe community organizer, seed keeper, and storyteller), and Sami Maldonado (the Course Coordinator and graduate student in the School for Environment & Sustainability), with support too from Lesli Hoey (Co-Director of the UM Transformative Food Systems Fellowship).

Learn more and register for free as a community member on the Food Literacy for All website. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/sustainab…

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