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.

Lucille Grignon

My name is Lucy Grignon. I am an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Nation and a direct descendant of the Menominee Nation. Muh-he-con-ne-ok being of the People of the Waters that are never still, and Menominee being of the Ancient movers. I am a passionate community-taught chef, educator, teacher, Momma, photographer, artist, writer, doula, and advocate for my community and the world around me. I am developing my relationship with Grandmother Earth. My family owns an Indigenous Homestead called Ancient Roots in Bowler, Wisconsin. We research traditional gardening practices from our ancestors dating back to ages ago to the present day. We use a combination of their methods to learn, preserve, grow, seed save, reconnect, and share. We are working to reconnect to our cultural inheritance through the land, plants, medicines, and wildlife. I recognize my connections to my Indigenous roots come in many forms, from our language journey to the stories of our elders, our people, and our healing.

Vivien Sansour

Vivien Sansour is an artist, researcher, and writer. She uses installations, images, sketches, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for seed conservation and the protection of agrobiodiversity as a cultural/political act. Vivien founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library in 2014, where she works with farmers in Palestine and around the world to preserve ancestral seeds and biocultural knowledge. Her work as an artist, scholar, and writer has been showcased internationally. Vivien was most recently the Distinguished Artistic Fellow in Experimental Humanities at Bard College, and is currently the Executive Director of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library.

Jalal Sabur

In 2010, Jalal Sabur began farming with Wassaic Community Farm – growing produce for farmers markets while running a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and gleaning project. While at Wassaic Community Farm Jalal co-founded the Freedom Food Alliance and the Victory Bus Project. The Freedom Food Alliance is a collective of small rural and urban farmers, activists, artists, community folks and political prisoners who use food as an organizing tool. The Alliance founded the Victory Bus Project to connect urban and rural communities and to support families of prisoners by providing transportation (along with a box of farm-fresh food) for folks visiting prisoners in the Hudson Valley. In 2013, Jalal started Sweet Freedom Farm to grow and aggregate vegetables, grains, herbs, and maple syrup, prioritizing the folks impacted by the prison system. Sweet Freedom is also a training site for young Black farmers, a gathering space for partnering projects in the alliance, and building a Grow Food, Not Prison movement.

Misty Cook

Misty Cook (Davids), M.S., is the author of Medicine Generations, Natural Native American Medicines Traditional to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans Tribe. Cook studied these medicines for over seven years to complete this book, enjoying every minute of it. This includes searching for them, identification, gathering, drying, preservation for use throughout the year, preparation and having them available for those who need them. She is also a cultural consultant with a masters in management providing diversity training on many topics including Native American students in education, Native American history, Native American games, and of course, Medicines.

Lucas Ondak

Lucas Ondak is a transexual curator and artist from Edmond, Oklahoma, the occupied land of the Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Osage, and Wichita people. They are committed to working with contemporary art and artists who consider the lives and experiences of the prairie region, particularly work that centers on decolonization and queer liberation. He is a recent graduate from the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people where they researched queer art history, contemporary Indigenous art, and 20th and 21st century photography.

Frances Cathryn

Frances Cathryn combines archival research, media theory, and social design to recontextualize American cultural narratives. Her cultural criticism on topics ranging from the myth of American exceptionalism to marginalized historical landscapes has been featured in such publications as Frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ARTnews, the Brooklyn Rail, and Social Text journal. She currently manages editorial projects at Forge Project, where she coordinates publications, advises writers-in-residence, authors a monthly newsletter, and leads its digital-first journal, Forging.

Stephanie Lee

Choy Commons

Tara Rodriguez-Besosa

Nathan Kleinman

Justin Paulino

Leila Stallone

Tatiana Blackhorse

Sage Liotta

Maggie Thomas

BEM Bookstore

Ozoz Sokoh

Marie Watt

Kenny Perkins

TO BE ANNOUNCED JANUARY 2025

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

TAXI:

• HVA Taxi Service, 845-867-8257
• Red Hook/Rhinebeck Taxi, 845-876-2010
• Around the Corner Taxi, 845-224-4760

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 Olin Auditorium:

Find Finberg House:

Find the Stevenson Library: