Presenter: Mónica Ramírez has dedicated more than two decades to the eradication of gender-based violence and the promotion of gender equity, specifically on behalf of Latinas and farmworker and immigrant women. In 2003 she founded the first state-based legal project aimed at combating gender discrimination against women employed in agriculture in Florida. In 2006 she joined Southern Poverty Law Center where she founded the first national legal project to end workplace sexual violence and other forms of gender discrimination against migrant farmworker and low-paid immigrant women.

Food Literacy for All will take place for the third year on Tuesday evenings during the winter semester of 2019. UM students can enroll in the course for credit and community members can attend the series for free. Students can also enroll in an optional 1 credit discussion seminar to reflect more deeply on each Food Literacy for All talk.

Food Literacy for All is a community-academic partnership course started in 2017. Structured as an evening lecture series, Food Literacy for All features different guest speakers each week to address diverse challenges and opportunities of both domestic and global food systems. The course is designed to prioritize engaged scholarship that connects theory and practice. By bringing national and global leaders, we aim to ignite new conversations and deepen existing commitments to building more equitable, health-promoting, and ecologically sustainable food systems.

Community Attendees

Registration for each session opens one week prior. The first course of 2019 will take place on Tuesday, January 15th. Free shuttles from Detroit will be offered on four occasions throughout the semester. Click here for community registration details.

Course Summary

Concurrent food, energy, water, and climate crises, and a global rise in obesity amidst widespread hunger and undernutrition, have re-focused public attention on the deficiencies and complexities of the global food system. Yet, a diversity of ‘alternative’ food systems demonstrates that food systems can be nutrition sensitive, socially just, and conserve natural resources. Transforming food systems will require coordinated effort across scales, drawing upon diverse disciplinary and practical perspectives, and understanding how value systems shape food and agriculture. Linking theory and practice is also essential, involving the full range of actors moving food from farm to fork.

This course offers a unique opportunity for students to gain an interdisciplinary introduction to food system issues through a seminar series bringing high profile speakers to campus from diverse sectors: policy, academia, grassroots movements, public health, conservation, and more. Students will integrate theory and practice through this partnership course that connects campus and community, led by a UM faculty member together with a co-instructor working to develop urban agriculture and enhance food justice and food sovereignty in Detroit. Students will develop competencies and cognitive skills in the area of food system sustainability including critical and systems thinking, community engagement, creativity, and analytical ability.

Course Sponsors
The 2019 Food Literacy for All course is supported by the Food Systems Theme in the School for Environment and Sustainability, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for Engaged Academic Learning (CEAL), and the Center for the Education of Women (CEW+).