[Sehefac] Hunger, Meditation, Incarceration: Farah Godrej and Dana Simmons in Conversation (November 1)

[Dana Simmons]

*The Health Humanities & Disability Justice Initiative at the *
*University of California, Riverside*
*Invites you to the following virtual event *

*Hunger, Meditation, Incarceration*

*Farah Godrej and Dana Simmons in Conversation*

*Wednesday, November 1, 2023, 10:30 am-noon*

* TO REGISTER CLICK HERE
<https://events.ucr.edu/event/hunger_meditation_incarceration>*



*The Event*: A conversation about carceral ‘nutrition’ and carceral
‘wellness’, in which terms meant to denote sustenance, nourishment and
health are repurposed by the mass incarceration complex as forms of
punishment and behavior control. This conversation will consider the
possibilities of building anti-carceral movements through practices of
nourishment (such as mutual aid and hunger striking) and liberatory forms
of yoga and meditation. It will also consider questions, concerns, and
worries about how to confront carcerality as scholars and as responsible
humans.



*Farah Godrej* <https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/godrej> is
Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside.
Her areas of research and teaching include Indian political thought,
Gandhi’s political thought, cosmopolitanism, globalization and comparative
political theory.  She also studies contemporary issues such as
environmental justice, food politics and mass incarceration. Her research
appears in journals such as *Political Theory, Political Research
Quarterly, Theory & Event, The Review of Politics,* an*d Polity*, and she
is the author of *Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice,
Discipline* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Her new book *Freedom
Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State*
<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/freedom-inside-9780190070090?cc=us&lang=en&>
* (*Oxford University Press, 2022) is the winner of the 2023 Charles Taylor
Book Award from the American Political Science Association, and received
honorable mentions for the 2023 American Association of Publishers (AAP)
PROSE award for scholarly excellence and the 2023 Lee Ann Fujii Award for
Innovation in the Interpretive Study of Political Violence from the
American Political Science Association.



*Dana Simmons* <https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/danasim>*, *a
historian of science and technology, is Acting Chair of the Department of
Society, Environment, and Health Equity at the University of California,
Riverside. Her research interests include hunger, nutrition, the human
sciences, feminist theory and technopolitics. Her book, *Vital Minimum:
Need, Science and Politics in Modern France**,*
<https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo20069271.html> traces
the history of the concept of the "vital minimum"--the living wage, a
measure of physical and social needs. Dana’s essays appear in books and
journals such as *Engaging STS*, *Journal of Modern History*,
*Representations,* and* Osiris*. Her current book project, upon which this
conversation draws, is about an enduring pattern in United States history:
the production of hunger. On multiple occasions, from the nineteenth
through the twentieth century, state agents and private (settler) citizens
colluded in large-scale campaigns of ethnic cleansing and political control
by deprivation. Food sources were destroyed, blocked, denied, altered or
substituted in order to force people to obey, move, clear lands, accede to
white power, and make way for new regimes of land and labor. Hunger served
as an instrument to consolidate the modern United States. Central to this
conversation will be a chapter of that book in progress (*Fight, Don’t
Starve: Hunger Made in U.S.A*) entitled, “Carceral Hunger.”


This event is co-sponsored by UCR’s *Health Humanities and Disability
Justice Initiative*
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/177OwB0dj9xiv6pO6dwzaOUm2LI-oEVer/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107509772935754601643&rtpof=true&sd=true>
and
the *Decolonizing Humanism(?) Initiative*
<https://ideasandsociety.ucr.edu/decolonizinghumanism/> at the Center for
Ideas and Society.
Carla Mazzio (she/her/hers)
<https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/carlam/update>
Associate Professor, Department of English
C0-Director, Health Humanities and Disability Justice (HHDJ) Initiative
<https://hhdj.ucr.edu/>
Co-Director, Medical and Health Humanities Minor
<https://english.ucr.edu/mhhs>
University of California, Riverside

*"We at UCR would like to respectfully acknowledge and recognize our*
*responsibility to the original and current caretakers of this land, water,*
*and air: the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano peoples and all of*
*their ancestors and descendants, past, present, and future. Today this*
*meeting place is home to many Indigenous peoples from all over the world,*
*including UCR faculty, students, and staff, and we are grateful to have
the*
*opportunity to live and work on these homelands*."

-- 
Dana Simmons
Acting Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Society, Environment
and Health Equity
University of California, Riverside
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