Past Events

An audio-visual review of the daily search for sustenance from the perspective of social anthropology and the history of human cultures, including present-day challenges to food security and adequate nutrition.

Mozia is a very small island close to Marsala at the Western cape of Sicily. A Phoenician trade port since the 8th century BCE, Mozia was connected to the Elymi and the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia. From the 6th to the 4th century BCE, Carthage took advantage of Mozia’s strategic position; thereafter Sicily became totally Roman after the Punic Wars. Professor Nigro’s excavations have brought to light the city walls, a Tofet burial site, and recently the sacred area of Kothon.

Critical approaches to the sustainability of food systems have come from many directions: consumption, marketing, procurement, processing, and farming. Sustainable diets offer a promising way to integrate health of people and the health of ecosystems. Since it is clear that the dominant pathway of the food system has led to diets that are unsustainable for human bodies and for landscapes, this talk explores contending ways to link health and environment. It includes some of the ways to make this link for theory, policy, and practice, focusing on relations of power that these approaches express or hide.
 

Kicking off her term as The American University of Rome's Social-Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Laura Weidman Powers will present a lecture on and discuss the role of social entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley with fellow entrepreneur and AUR visiting professor, Kyla Fullenwider.