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Congratulations to MacKenzie Wade (Anthropology) and Mariah Miller (Global Studies), winners of the Crossroads 2.0 Course Proposal competition. Their course, titled “Alternative Foods, Alternative Economies: Creative Collaborations to Reimagine the Food System" will be offered in the College of Creative Studies during the 2021-22 academic year. Read on to learn more!
The Graduate Division and the College of Creative Studies are pleased to announce the winners of the first-ever Crossroads 2.0 course proposal competition. Following in the tradition of the original Crossroads program, which brought together faculty and graduate students in an interdisciplinary research and teaching project, Crossroads 2.0 offers pairs of graduate students from different disciplines the opportunity to develop and teach a course in the College of Creative Studies.
The winning proposal, submitted by graduate students MacKenzie Wade (Anthropology) and Mariah Miller (Global Studies), is titled "Alternative Foods, Alternative Economies: Creative Collaborations to Reimagine the Food System." It will be offered in the College of Creative Studies (CCS) during the 2021-22 academic year.
"Our topic synthesizes our dissertation research in a way that makes it accessible and engaging to undergraduates and makes a valuable contribution to UCSB's course offerings," said Miller. "The readings on and discussions of food systems will give undergraduates a better understanding of a challenge that they or many of their classmates are facing and, unlike other courses offered, it will be a chance to do this in an interdisciplinary setting important for teasing out aspects of complex problems. Studying social organizations, how they work, and what can and can not be accomplished with them gives students a chance to prepare for, process and contextualize experiences interning or volunteering. Although these experiences are taken into consideration in the college application process, encouraged by many courses for community engagement, and are fundamentally important when looking for jobs, UCSB doesn't offer undergraduate courses on social organizations."
Wade and Miller's food justice-themed proposal was chosen from a strong field of 21 submissions that addressed a range of topics from wildfires to climate change to sex work to prison abolitionism. The call for proposals specified that courses focus on a social justice or environmental justice theme and offer students opportunities to discover how their different disciplinary knowledge can come together in generative ways.
Wade and Miller will each receive a stipend of $5,000 this summer to begin working on the course, as well as a second stipend of $5,000 each in the fall to finalize the syllabus while holding a teaching assistant or graduate student researcher position in their department. They will then receive associate positions to teach their course during winter 2022.