Supported by the Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” initiative.

Food & Memory

March 6-8th, 2025, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

a conference hosted by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck

A recipe for a scientist is a how-to guide; when engaged with humanities, that recipe is a poem, a declaration, a history, a linguistics manual. A seed for a farmer is a starting point; and when situated within cultural knowledge and political lives, seeds become sacred ancestors and active protesters.

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

The past two Rethinking Place conferences have engaged with themes that apply to our complex food systems and their many human and non-human players – recipes and seeds can be seen as living archives, sites of research, and modes of knowledge production. Continuing with the vein of place-based understandings put forward by the 2022-2023 Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and Center for Human Rights and the Arts COMMON GROUND biennial, the Environmental and Urban Studies classes and programming, the Bard Farm, and existing partners, Rethinking Place hosts a multidisciplinary gathering to interrogate questions of food and memory. 

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) in a time when current food systems, planetary health, and direct violence pose existential threats to the sovereignty and wellbeing of many, Rethinking Place aims to center a diverse range of voices and histories that have touched and formed the current agricultural region of the Hudson Valley and beyond.

design by Liam Dwyer

SCHEDULE TO BE ANNOUNCED JANUARY 2025

A recipe for a scientist is a how-to guide; when engaged with humanities, that recipe is a poem, a declaration, a history, a linguistics manual. A seed for a farmer is a starting point; and when situated within cultural knowledge and political lives, seeds become sacred ancestors and active protesters.

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

The past two Rethinking Place conferences have engaged with themes that apply to our complex food systems and their many human and non-human players – recipes and seeds can be seen as living archives, sites of research, and modes of knowledge production. Continuing with the vein of place-based understandings put forward by the 2022-2023 Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and Center for Human Rights and the Arts COMMON GROUND biennial, the Environmental and Urban Studies classes and programming, the Bard Farm, and existing partners, Rethinking Place hosts a multidisciplinary gathering to interrogate questions of food and memory. 

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) in a time when current food systems, planetary health, and direct violence pose existential threats to the sovereignty and wellbeing of many, Rethinking Place aims to center a diverse range of voices and histories that have touched and formed the current agricultural region of the Hudson Valley and beyond.

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION WILL OPEN JANUARY 2025.

TO BE ANNOUNCED JANUARY 2025

TO BE ANNOUNCED JANUARY 2025

TO BE ANNOUNCED JANUARY 2025

Getting Here

TRAIN: Bard College is a 15 minute drive from the Rhinecliff Amtrak Station.

TAXI:

Where to Stay

Accessible on Bard Shuttle:

Hotel Tivoli, Tivoli

The Grand Dutchess Inn, Red Hook

Red Hook Country Inn, Red Hook

Within a 15-20 minute drive:

Beekman Arms & Delamater Inn, Rhinebeck

Courtyard by Marriott, Kingston

Hotel Kinsley, Kingston

 

Find the Bard College Campus Center (Weis Cinema):

Find RKC (Bito Auditorium, Workshop Classrooms):

Find Olin Auditorium: