Planting the Future from the Seeds of Diasporic Edible Gardens
This course consists of a theoretical part that addresses historical perspectives related to edible gardens, plants, food, and diaspora, and a practical part that requires students to tend a garden and use its products in cooking. The course material allows students to become familiar with plants and food that were or are grown by diasporic communities in the United States. The Italian American community will occupy a central role in the course and the theoretical notions (for example, the definition of future or slow looking or embodied knowledge, etc.) used to define Italian Americans will act as a lens of analysis that allows the discussion of the edible gardens of other diasporic communities. Throughout, the edible garden and its products are considered the result of the cultural sensitivity of diasporic communities who possess knowledge and skills to assert themselves beyond social class and beyond the perception of them as 'other' by the society that hosts them. The course material aims to capture the stories arising from the interaction between edible gardens, plants and the people who tend them; the stories of how gardeners experienced or experience the garden and its products with the entire range of senses: smell, touch, sight, taste and how the relationship with the land supported or supports the body and mind of those who cultivate.