Thursday, March 6, 2025 – Saturday, March 8, 2025

Rethinking Place Third Annual Conference

Food & Memory is the third and final conference hosted by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck. It aims to explore food systems, agricultural practices, and culinary histories as a point of entry into place-making, past, present, and future.

The conference brings together agricultural workers, chefs, food systems scholars, and artists to create fertile ground for interdisciplinary discussion. Situated on the banks of the Mahicantuck (Hudson River) at a time when current food systems, planetary health, and political and environmental instability pose existential threats to the sovereignty and wellbeing of human and non-human kin alike, Rethinking Place aims to center a diverse range of voices and histories that have touched and formed the current agricultural region in which Bard College is located.

The two prior Rethinking Place conferences, focused on emergent and disruptive archives and on Indigenous research methods, engaged themes that continue to apply to Food & Memory. Our complex food systems and their many human and non-human players – recipes and seeds, plants and care – can be seen as living archives, locations of research, and sites of knowledge production. Rethinking Place now hosts a multidisciplinary gathering to directly interrogate questions of food and memory, building on twenty-four months of work in adjacent areas. We are pleased to join our efforts in place-based inquiry with other entities on the Bard campus. For their support over the life of the Rethinking Place project, we thank the Bard Farm, the Center for Environmental Science and Humanities, the Center for Human Rights, and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

Thursday, March 6th

•  In the Kitchen with Our Ancestors— Electa Wuhwehweeheemeew Quinney Keynote with Lucy Grignon from Ancient Roots
  • Lucille Grignon (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) of Ancient Roots Homestead, community-taught chef, educator, teacher, Momma, photographer, artist, writer, doula, and advocate for my community and the world around me.

• Sewing Circle with artist Marie Watt
  • Marie Watt (Seneca Nation of Indians (Turtle Clan)), interdisciplinary American artist.

• Food & Memory Exhibition Opening and Reception

• Opening Community Meal for Chop Chop Book Launch, co-hosted by BEM Bookstore
  • BEM Bookstore, a new literary home at the intersection of food & Blackness. https://www.bembrooklyn.com/ 
  • Ozoz Sokoh, Nigerian food explorer, culinary anthropologist and food historian, author of Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria.
  • Nana Araba Wilmot, Chef/Owner of Georgina’s Private Chef and Catering Co. and Curator of Love That I Knead, a West African focused dinner series.

Friday, March 7th

• Taste the Revolution: The Evolution of Bengali Food Culture with Farah Momen
  • Farah Momen, co-founder of The Now Exchange, an entrepreneur and chef exploring the ways in which food experiences can be a healing, reflective, connective tool for individuals from all walks of life.

• Land and Memory: Research protocols and investigations in colonial archives with Lucas Ondak and Frances Cathryn of Forge Project
  •  Lucas Ondak, Forge/Rethinking Place Research Assistant, transexual curator and artist.
  • Frances Cathryn, independent curator & editorial project manager at Forge Project.

• Rethinking the Bard Narrative: Public Writing, Zines and Place-Based Research with Justin Paulino and Leila Stallone
  • Leila Stallone, Bard ‘24, researcher at the Minnesota Historical Society in creating a Queer Digital History Map.
  • Justin Paulino, an undergraduate research assistant and recipient of the 2023 research fellowship for Rethinking Place.

• Grow Food Not Prisons: Building a movement towards Liberation and Justice with Jalal Sabur of Sweet Freedom Farm
  • Jalal Sabur, co-founder of Freedom Food Alliance and Sweet Freedom Farm.

• Medicine Walk with Misty Cook
  • Misty Cook (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), M.S., author of Medicine Generations, Natural Native American Medicines Traditional to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans Tribe.

• Rethinking Place Food & Memory Fellow Presentations
  • Tatiana Blackhorse (Navajo/Hungarian), Bard ‘25, 2024 Undergraduate Research Fellow with Rethinking Place with a focus on food and cultural identity.
  • Sage Liotta, Bard ‘25, 2024 Rethinking Place Summer Research Fellow
  • Maggie Thomas, 2024 Rethinking Place Summer Research Fellow

• Jam Making Session at Montgomery Place Farm

Saturday, March 8th

• Closing Keynote with Kenny Perkins of Akwesasne Seed Hub
  • Kenny Perkins (Mohawk), Project Manager at Akwesasne Seed Hub.

• Building Land-Based Solidarity Networks with Tara Rodriguez Besosa, Nathan Kleinman, and Lana Mustafa
  • Nathan Kleinman, farmer and plant breeder, founding member of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance and Co-Founder of Experimental Farm Network.
  • Lana Mustafa, Palestinian-American farmer, seed protector, beekeeper, and Executive Director of Montclair Community Farms. 
  • Tara Rodríguez-Besosa, interdisciplinary designer and organizer, co-founder and creative director of El Departamento de la Comida and resident of OtraCosa Jaragüal Cuir (queer land project).

• Maize in the Milpas: Nixtamalized Corn Masa and Cuisine in the Americas with Luis Chávez-González (Caxcan/Tepehuan)
  • Luis Chávez-González (Caxcan/Tepehuan), Associate Professor in American and Indigenous Studies and Ethnomusicology at Bard College

• Panel on student organizing for food justice with BardEATS, Vassar Hunger Action, and Williams WRAPS
  • Vassar Hunger Action, an organization dedicated to educating about food insecurity and giving back to the community through volunteer work.
  • BardEATS, a collaborative partnership among Bard students, dining services, faculty, and staff committed to making our food systems on campus more sustainable and equitable
  • Williams Recovery of all Perishable Surplus (WRAPS), a group that works at the intersection of food insecurity and food waste, employing a two-part model that connects the Williams College campus with the North Adams community.

• Palestine Heirloom Seed Library Traveling Kitchen Event
  • Vivien Sansour, artist, researcher, and writer. Founder and director of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library.