From left: Kirby Skoric and Mohadeseh Mousazadeh Miandehi. Not pictured: Taina Diaz-Reyes. Photograph by Maureen Kobierowski, ASU Humanities Lab.
The Heritage of Seed and Story: Narrative and Legacy in the Food System
Lab: Food, Health and Climate Change, Fall 2021
Instructors: Joni Adamson, Rimjhim Aggarwal
Type: Video
Tags: Food, Sustainability, Farming, Agriculture, Indigenous, Culture, Tradition
Team: Taina Diaz-Reyes, Mohadeseh Mousazadeh Miandehi, Kirby Skoric
Learn more about this Lab
About the outcome
Increasing food sovereignty and preserving tradition are important elements of sustainability, especially when traditional modes of knowledge transfer have been undervalued and excluded within the academy. Working with Indigenous farmers and growers across the Valley, this film project will demonstrate how sharing traditional knowledge and telling oral histories can be used to create more sustainable food systems, strengthen integenerational relationships, and encourage dialogue between farming communities.
About the team
Taina Diaz-Reyes is a PhD student in the School of Sustainability focusing on traditional ecological knowledge, spirituality, desert ethnoecology, and food systems. She graduated from the George Washington University with a BA in Geography and Sustainability, then with a MDiv/MA in Sustainability dual degree from Wake Forest University in 2019. She currently works with Dr. Melissa Nelson from the School of Sustainability as a graduate research assistant.
Mohadesah Mousazadeh Miandehi: I am currently a Ph.D. student in English Literature with a focus on Environmental Humanities at Arizona State University. My research lies on an intersection of literature and environmental humanities, therefore, leading me to a more interdisciplinary direction.
My name is Kirby Skoric, and I am a master's student at ASU studying sustainable solutions at the School of Sustainability. I specifically focus on sustainable food systems and am interested in cultivating ways to use food as a tool to connect people with one another and with their environment.