Office of Sustainability
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Amplifying BIPOC Voices in Sustainability Series

About

Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) have long led movements to protect our communities and the planet. However, BIPOC voices are often excluded and silenced in mainstream environmentalism. The Social Sustainability Coalition, which is part of the UW-Madison Office of Sustainability, acknowledges the damage caused by this lack of representation. BIPOC communities are not only integral to the sustainability movement’s progress, but also experience disproportionate environmental harm. As a part of our ongoing efforts to recenter these critical voices, we invite you to join the Social Sustainability Coalition in our Amplifying BIPOC Voices in Sustainability series.

Each month, the series will highlight the work of one or more UW-Madison BIPOC community members engaging with sustainability. Leading up to the event, we will use our social media platforms to share resources with the Badger community, inviting our audience to learn with us about the current topic. On the last Wednesday of the month, we will host a virtual event where attendees have the opportunity to learn firsthand from the featured community member(s).

We want to emphasize that we are not experts, but will be learning alongside our audience! We hope this series will help UW-Madison’s sustainability community to engage in critical conversations, cultivate active learning, and celebrate the incredible initiatives led by BIPOC members of our community. If you have any questions or identify as BIPOC and are interested in highlighting your work in this series, send us an email at socialsustainabilitycoalition@g-groups.wisc.edu.

Follow us on social media for event information!

Office of Sustainability Facebook page | Social Sustainability Coalition Facebook page | Instagram | Twitter

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  • Food Chains: Documentary on Farmworker Justice in the U.S. 

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Classes at UW:

  •  Sociology 222/C&E Sociology: Food, Culture, and Society (Spring 2023)
    • Social and cultural dimensions of food production and consumption. Uses historical and cross-cultural analytical frameworks. Treats a wide variety of topics including indigenous, racial, and ethnic foodways, industrialized food systems, sustainable agriculture, movements for food justice.
  • Environmental Studies 600: Scaling Back Food Excess (Spring 2023)
    • From farm to fork, about 40% of all food grown for human consumption in the United States is wasted. Barriers to waste reduction vary across food production scales from a local to global context, with bottlenecks to resource use and distribution occurring throughout the food supply chain. At the same time, climate change and environmental disasters pose increasing threats to food security for a growing global population. In this course we will be reframing the food “waste” narrative to focus on prevention by looking at areas of excess resource accumulation along critical pathways and strategies for optimizing use throughout the product’s lifecycle. The course will begin with an overview of how food resources become wasted across the globe, investigating the root causes of waste behaviors and methods of sustainable resource disposal. Over the course of the semester, students will engage with Madison-area community organizations to take a deeper look at local food recovery, redistribution, and recycling efforts. Through team projects, students will then work with community partners to develop resource guides and communication tools to support local resource matching and collaboration efforts. While gaining experience in Madison’s food recovery network, students will apply their knowledge of local waste reduction solutions to the broader context of global food systems sustainability.
  • C&E Sociology 340: Issues in Food Systems (only offered in the fall)
    • With primary emphasis on the U.S., the course covers social, economic and biological dimensions of food systems. 
  • C&E Sociology 341: Labor in Global Food Systems (only offered in the fall)
    • Overview of our current food system and how new technologies and globalization are reshaping it, focusing especially on the implications for workers throughout the food chain. Learn about the ways that social movements are working to reshape commodity chains by promoting local production, fair trade, and labor justice.
  • Environ St/Geog 309: People, Land, and Food: Comparative Study of Agriculture Systems
    • Introduction to how and why humans have transformed natural landscapes around the world, including tropical deforestation. Exploration of different agricultural systems, and topics such as food security, land scarcity, bioenergy and the impacts of food production on the environment.

Food Resources on Campus:

Food Resources in Dane County:

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Classes at UW–Madison

  • URB R PL 512: Gentrification and Urban Restructuring
  • PUB AFFR 520: Inequality, Race and Public Policy

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Also available at the Madison Public Library

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