Geography and Earth Sciences
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Curriculum Vitae
RACHEL SLOCUM
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Geography, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA
- Thesis topic: US urban greenhouse gas emissions abatement, Cities for Climate Protection campaign
MA, International Development, International Development Program, Clark University, Worcester, MA
- Thesis topic: Gender and land use, Office du Niger, Mali
BA, Honors, Political Science, McGill University, Montréal, PQ, Canada
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
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Land use and gender: Conducted focus groups, interviewed villagers, officials and development workers in the Office du Niger, Segou, Mali to understand women’s and men’s land use decision making practices
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Cities and climate change: Studied greenhouse gas mitigation efforts in US cities. Analyzed local action plans and emissions inventories, interviewed nonprofit and government officials
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Local food and sustainability: Researched US local food efforts to see how social disparities in the food system were being understood and addressed. Studied the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market to understand customer preferences and attitudes about local, sustainably grown and organic food. Studied local and national efforts toward food justice.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
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Sustainable farming, food security, food justice
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Gender and ethnicity
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Urban climate change policy
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Socio-economic inequalities
EXPERIENCE
Assistant Professor, Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, WI (tenure track appointment), 2010 -- Conducted research, wrote grant proposals, papers and presentations
- Taught World Regions, Conservation of Global Environments,
Geographies of Africa, Geographies of Food and Farming (12 contact
hours)
- Worked on edited collection (Geographies of race and food)
- Home Grown Initiative, Farmers’ Market subcommittee, City of Minneapolis, provided recommendations to the City on farmers’ markets
- Worked with Twin Cities food organizations to address issues of social justice in the food system
- Provided comments on Oxfam America’s paper Shut out: how US farm programs fail minority farmers
- Taught Social Inequality, Environment and Society and Environmental Citizenship, 12 contact hours of teaching per week
- Published original research
- Engaged in service at the college and departmental levels
- Received commendation from the Dean of Social Sciences on annual professional development goals and reports
- Proposed new courses: Gender, Space and Society: Global Perspectives, The Social Dimensions of Environmental Change and Environment and Society
Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, spring 2008
- Spring semester, for the purpose of research and writing on a study of the social, agri-
ecological and economic geographies of the Minneapolis farmers’ market
Visiting Scholar, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 2004-05
- Began research on National Science Foundation grant on US local food networks and social justice
Consultant, farm payments, Oxfam America, US Program, Boston, MA, 2004
- Researched and wrote paper on US government payments to cotton producers and the potential impact of effective payment limits
Consultant, food systems, Central New York Community Food System Coalition, Syracuse, NY, 2003-04
- Researched and wrote a proposal to encourage collaboration, secured funding and conducted outreach
Visiting Assistant Professor, Syracuse University, Department of Geography, Syracuse, NY, 2001-03
- Taught Global Environmental Change, Population Change, Worlds of Food and Famine, World Regional, Africa: Problems and Prospects
- Performed interviews with English and Spanish-speaking residents of Worcester
Lecturer, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, 2000
- Proposed, designed and taught the seminar, Sustainable Cities
Research Assistant, Clark University Graduate School of Geography, Worcester, MA, 1996-99
- Analyzed data on local causes of global climate change, among other projects
Trainer, Gender and Development, Promotion of Local Initiatives, GTZ, Bamako, Mali, 1995
- Planned workshop, wrote case studies and presented gender sensitive tools to staff
- Researched and wrote UUSC publication, Gender Justice among other work
Consultant, Project Evaluation, Africare, Bamako, Mali, 1992
- Evaluated village level integrated pest management program and prepared report
Project Manager, sustainable livestock project for Tuareg nomads, Tahoua, Niger, 1992
- Wrote proposal, secured $14,000 grant from Presbyterian Hunger Program and Church
World Service on behalf of the Kel Aghrala, Tuareg, implemented project
Policy Analyst, Church World Service/Lutheran World Relief Office on Development Policy, Washington, DC, 1990-91
- Analyzed US foreign aid policy for Central America and Africa, planned advocacy strategy, wrote reports, lobbied Congressional staff and collaborated with NGO working groups
Peace Corps Volunteer, Small Enterprise Development/Agroforestry, Tahoua, Niger, 1987-89
- Implemented projects on fuel wood conservation, health and small enterprise development
- Learned the Hausa and French
languages to communicate with
government officials and villagers
SKILLS
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Research: establishing research questions, designing survey instruments, collecting data using literature review, archives, participant observation, focus groups and interviews and analyzing data using descriptive statistics, graphics and assessment of key themes from qualitative data;
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Working knowledge of SPSS, NVIVO qualitative data analysis software;
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Some Spanish, intermediate French and conversational Hausa;
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Strengths: highly effective in listening to, presenting to and writing for different audiences, very capable of working independently and with teams, strong capacity to listen and ask critical questions;
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Attributes: highly organized, detail-oriented, creative, work well under deadline, multi-tasker.
GRANTS and AWARDS
Online course development grant, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, $5,000, 2011
Center for 21st Century Studies, semester fellowship, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2011 (declined)
International Faculty Development Fund, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, 2010
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To attend Hawke Institute symposium, The Scientist, the Cook and the Grower, University of South Australia, Adelaide
Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota, 2008
- Grant funded: A Survey of the Minneapolis Farmers' Market
The National Science Foundation, Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Geography and Regional Science, 2004
- Grant funded: BCS 0417592 Community food systems and anti-racist practice
- Obtained as an independent scholar
The National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, 1999
- Grant funded: BCS 9900876 Urban commitments to greenhouse gas emissions abatement
Fulbright Scholarship,
Institute for International Education, United
States Information Agency, 1994
Master's research in Mali
Peace Corps Fellowship,
International Development Program, Clark
University, 1993
- Scholarship for the MA program
PUBLICATIONS
2011. Race in the study of food, Progress in Human Geography 35(3): 303-327. Online first, August 26, 2010
2009. The embodied politics of pain in US anti-racism, ">ACME: An International E Journal for Critical Geographies 8(1):tba. (accepted October, 2007)
2009.
Discussant comments on Michael Brown’s Urban Geography Plenary lecture,
“Public health as urban politics, urban geography: venereal biopower in
Seattle, 1943-1983, Urban Geography 30(1):30-35.
2008. Thinking race
through corporeal feminist theory: divisions and intimacies at the
2008. Sociological research directions on climate change: paper for public report to be published through the National Science Foundation
2007. Whiteness, space and alternative food practice. Geoforum 38(3):520-533. Chosen to be part of the virtual special issue celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Geoforum, which featured 26 papers which demonstrate the excellence and breadth of scholarship.
2006. Anti-racist practice in the work of community food organizations Antipode 38(2):327-349.
2004. Polar bears and energy-efficient light bulbs: strategies to bring climate change home Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22(3):413-438.
2004. Consumer citizens and the Cities for Climate Protection campaign Environment and Planning A, 36(5):763-782.
Co-authored publications
2011. Slocum, Rachel, Jerry Shannon, Kirstin Valentine Cadieux, Matthew Beckman. 'Properly, with love, from scratch': Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Radical History Review 110 (Spring):178-191 (special issue ed. Jeffrey Pilcher and Dan Bender)
2011. Cook, Ian et al. Food geographies: Afters. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1):104-120
Slocum, Rachel, Elisabeth Ellsworth, Arun Saldanha and Sandrine Zerbib. 2009. Local food and public space: a study of Minneapolis Farmers’ Market customers’ perceptions and practices, CURA Reporter 39:40-50.
2009.
Slocum, Rachel and Susan J. Smith. Introduction. Author meets critics
for Arun Saldanha’s Psychedelic white: Goa trance and the viscosity of
race, Social and Cultural Geography 10(4):499-500.
1998. Angel, David et al. The drivers of greenhouse gas emissions: what do we learn from local case studies? Local Environment 3(3): 263-277.
1995. Slocum, Rachel and Barbara Thomas-Slayter. Participation, empowerment and sustainable development in Power, process and participation: tools for change.
Rachel Slocum, Lori Wichhart, Barbara Thomas-Slayter and Dianne
Rocheleau (Eds.). London, Intermediate Technology Publications: 3-8.
1995.
Rocheleau, Dianne and Rachel Slocum. Participation in context: key
questions in Power, process and participation: tools for change. Rachel
Slocum et al. (Eds.). London, ITP: 17-30.
Book Reviews
2011. Review of Carolan, Michael. 2011. Embodied food politics. Ashgate, Aldershot, Environment and Planning A
2010. Review of Jackson, Peter (ed.). 2009. Changing families, changing food. Palgrave for Progress in Human Geography.
2009. Review of Morgan, K., Marsden, T., and Murdoch, J. 2006. Worlds of food: Place, power, and provenance in the food chain. Oxford University Press, Oxford and Blay-Palmer A. 2008. Food Fears: From Industrial to Sustainable Food Systems. Ashgate, Aldershot, Hants for Environment and Planning A.
2008. Review of
Anderson, Kay. 2007. Race
and the crisis
of humanism.
2003. Review of Portney, Kenneth. 2003. Taking sustainable cities seriously: economic development, the environment and quality of life in American cities. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Environment and Planning A 35(10):1895.
2000. Review of Low, Nicholas et al. (eds.). 2000. Consuming cities: the urban environment in the global economy after the Rio Declaration. London, Routledge. Environment and Planning A 32(6):1138.
GUEST PARTICIPATION
2010 Invited paper, Biopolitics, pleasure and racial
becoming, The Hawke Institute, University of South Australia for the
symposium, The Scientist, the Cook and the Grower.
2008 Guest lecture, 'Race, bodies and alternative food geographies', Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
2008 Invited Participant, Research Directions in Sociology on Global Climate Change Workshop, National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA
2008 Invited Participant, Food and Society: Gathering for Good Food, sponsored by The Kellogg Foundation, Chandler, AZ
2008 Discussant for Michael Brown’s paper for the Urban Geography Plenary, AAG, Boston,MA
2008
Chair, Food Environments III:Access and Race, AAG,
2007 Guest lecture, 'Geographies of race and food', University of Minnesota, Department of Geography, Minneapolis,MN
2006 Guest lecture, 'Geographies of race and food', St. Cloud State,Department of Geography, St.Cloud, MN
2006 Invited participant, presented'Theorizing race and food' at Eating Cultures: Race and Food, a research group, organized by Melanie DuPuis, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Irvine, CA
2007 Discussant,Food geographies II:Everyday Food, organized by Peter Jackson and Megan Blake, AAG,San Francisco, CA
2005 Whiteness and community food,Invited participant in 'White Food', a workshop organized by Julie Guthman and Melanie DuPuis, sponsored by the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
2004 Guest lecture, 'Food, justice and society', and 'Climate Protection, Climate Politics' Department of Political Science, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA
2003
Guest lecture, 'Consumer citizens and the Cities for Climate Protection
campaign', Rutgers University, Graduate Student Association, Department
of Geography, Newark, NJ
CONFERENCE PAPERS and SESSIONS ORGANIZED
2011. Organizer and panelist, What does race become through food?, AAG, Seattle, WA
2010. Co-organizer and chair with Shannon Hensley, Racial Ontologies and Corporeal Feminism, AAG, Washington DC
2010. Biopolitics, pleasure and racial becoming, AAG, Washington DC
2008 Co-organizer with Susan J. Smith, Author Meets the Critics: Arun Saldanha's Psychedelic White:Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race, AAG Boston
2008 Corporeal feminism and political ecology,in Political Ecology of Bodies II,organized by Becky Mansfield and Julie Guthman, AAG, Boston, MA
2007 The embodied politics of pain in US anti-racism in Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms, organized by David Featherstone, 5th International Critical Geography Conference,Mumbai, Maharashtra
2007 Co-organizer with Julie Guthman, Geographies of Race and Food I and II,AAG, San Francisco
2007 Race at the market, in Geographies of Race and Food II: Bodies and Spaces,AAG, San Francisco
2006 At the market: feeling race and food, in Emotional Geographies of Rurality,organized by Jo Little, Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers, London
2006 Whiteness,space and alternate food practices, in Performing Alternative Economic Imaginaries: Governance, Ethics, and the Everyday Spaces of Responsibility organized by Trina Hamilton,AAG,Chicago, IL
2005
Shifting the balance of power? Anti-racist practice and cross
difference alliance in the community food movement, in Political and
Cultural Economies of Organic Food Supply Chains/Alternative Food
Networks, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers,
Denver, CO
2002 Hungry polar bears and energy efficient light bulbs:toward a critical climate politics, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Los Angeles, CA
2001 The climate politics of the Cities for Climate Protection campaign, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New York, NY
1999 Cities and climate change prevention, Annual Meeting of the Association of American, Geographers, Honolulu, HI
1996 Repositioning women on the landscape of the Office du Niger, Mali, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Charlotte, NC
TEACHING
COURSES TAUGHT
Sustainable Cities (senior seminar, Holy Cross)Worlds of Food and Famine (senior seminar, Syracuse
Population Change (mid level, Syracuse
World Regional
Global Environmental Change (sophomores-seniors, Syracuse
Environment and Society (upper division and MA students, St. Cloud Sociology)
Environmental Citizenship (intro level, St. Cloud Sociology)
Social Inequality (mid level, St. Cloud Sociology)
World Cultural Regions (intro, UWL)
Conservation of Global Environments (mid level UWL)
TEACHING DEVELOPMENT AND
INNOVATION
Teaching
Strategies- Challenge students to excel in the development of their ideas through careful engagement with academic literature, written work and oral presentation;
- Balance accessibility with conceptual depth in choice of texts;
- Uphold a high standard and building students’ confidence in their abilities;
- Cover controversial ideas and current issues;
- Enable students to examine their presuppositions and to develop explanatory theories;
- Introduce students to the experiences of others whose lives may be quite different from their own;
- Encourage reflection on a student’s position in society;
- Build comprehension through class discussions and active engagement with students while lecturing;
- Allow students to arrive at an understanding using their own words and examples as the basis for conceptual understanding;
- Ensure that discussions enable all students the opportunity to speak and develop other means (email, online discussion groups, minute papers);
- Teach students how to base arguments in analysis of evidence, critical reasoning and the use of theoretical frameworks;
- Ensure that students know how to present orally in ways that quickly convey evidence, analysis and conclusions;
- Design assignments that build skills including:
- collection and use of primary data;
- recognition of the difference between peer and non-peer reviewed writing;
- ability to use peer-reviewed scholarship;
- capacity to develop an argument through a paper.
- Assigned project of comparative qualitative research on farmers’ markets, students enjoyed it
- Incorporated podcasts from public radio into discussion assignments.
- Designed three new courses for the Sociology curriculum (Social Dimensions of Environmental Change, Gender, Space and Society: global perspectives and Environment and Society);
- Participated in the development of the General Education standards for St. Cloud State University for environmental modules;
- Used web-based program (D2L), allowing student-led discussions, uploading of papers, timed quizzes, posting of readings;
- Used Skype to interact with students outside office hours
Undergraduate Research
- National Wildlife Foundation’s Textbook Recycling Fellowship
- Requested peer reviews of my teaching, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011
- Attended Center for the Advancing of Teaching and Learning conference, August 2010
- Attended Using Assessment to Measure and Improve Student
Learning, and to Demonstrate and Improve Teaching Effectiveness,
learned about options for indirect measures of student learning, CATL,
2011
- Attended workshop Improving Departmental Undergraduate Research,
learned about ways to support and promote undergraduate research within
classes and as part of faculty research, 2011
- Completed self study about Hmong history and experience in the US
with the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning’s Cultural
Competency -- Hmong Module, 2011
- Participated in a Quality Matters workshop on the development of online courses, SCSU, 2008
- Participated in SCSU Center for Teaching Excellence workshops: Transforming Student Writing and Teaching Race, a session with Howard Winant, 2006
SERVICE
Service to the Department, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, Geography and Earth Science Department
- Secretary for faculty meetings, Geography Department, 2011
- Volunteered for University level web page advisory committee (was not selected)
- Developed human geography page for students on the library webpage for Geography
- Participated in recruitment day for high school students, fall 2010
- Departmental search committee (committee of the whole), fall, 2010, fall 2011
- Volunteered to be a Liberal Arts Essay Competition Judge for the College, spring 2011
Service
to the Department, St.
Cloud State
University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 2005-08, Syracuse
University, 2001-03 and Clark University, 1995-98
- Faculty search committee, spring 2005, fall 2006, spring 2007, fall 2007
- Chair, faculty search committee, fall 200
- Wrote job announcement, screening forms, and interview questions
- Met with director of affirmative action and College Dean
- Department webmaster, 2007-fall 2008
- Added pages for fixed term faculty and included staff on a ‘People’ page; they had not been listed before
- Made program pages more accessible to students, added photos etc.
- Department curriculum committee, 2007
- Established a Sociology
intra-web share file of materials (syllabi,
films, readings) to support adjuncts teaching in Sociology at St. Cloud
State University
• Department regularly uses adjuncts to teach required courses. The file allows adjuncts to
make use of syllabi and other materials developed by or used by Department faculty. - Library Allocations Committee, 2007, 2008
- Outlined new course proposal procedures for the College of Social Sciences, 2007
- No detailed guide existed
for the steps necessary for new course
proposals and there was significant confusion about the process.
- Developed three new course
proposals (2006-07) to cultivate a
relationship with Women’s Studies and Geography (Gender,
space and
society) and to create an environmental focus in Sociology (Global
nature and Social dimensions of environmental change)
- College of Social Sciences Assessment Committee, 2006-2009
- Prepared reports to college on faculty assessment of Sociology courses
- Sociology Program Assessment committee, 2005-2009
- Devised 6 year timeline to assess whether the Sociology program is meeting its learning objectives associated with courses for the Sociology major and minor
- Advisor to Sociology and General Education majors
- Wrote letters of recommendation for Sociology majors
- Wrote a report for the Dean of the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, concerning adjunct faculty and changes that might be made to benefit the University and these staff.
- Wrote a guide for new faculty for the Department of Geography including frequently asked questions about housing, technical assistance, course details etc.
- Coordinator, Clark University Geographical Society (graduate student organization), 1996
- Organized colloquia and served on faculty review and search committees 1995-1998
Service to academic community: research grant refereeing
2008 NSF, Sociology, environmental social movements
2007 NSF, Sociology, health and climate change
2007 NSF, Geography, Career proposal
2006 NSF, Geography, racial disparities and toxics
2005 NSF, Geography, rural poverty
Service to academic community: journal refereeing
2011 Agriculture and Human Values, Postcolonial Studies
2010 Progress in Human Geography, Antipode, Geoforum (2), Agriculture and Human Values, Food and Foodways, Transactions Institute of British Geographers
2009 Antipode, Global Environmental Change, Social and Cultural Geography, Geoforum, Environment and Planning A, Acme.2008 Antipode, Social and Cultural Geography, Global Environmental Change (2), Emotion, Space and Society and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers
2007 Environment and Planning A (2)
2003 Urban Studies
Service to local food and food justice communities
- Participant, Home Grown, Farmers' Market Subcommittee of the City of Minneapolis, 2009
- Provided recommendations to the city in support of farmers’ markets
- Member, Twin Cities food and justice coalition, 2008-2009
- Provided comments for Oxfam America’s paper Shut out: how US farm programs fail minority farmers in support of Oxfam’s efforts to reform the US Farm Bill, 2008
- Working with local food organizations to understand and address issues of social justice and particularly racial inequality in the food system
- Committee member, anti-racism committee (ODC) within the US alternative food movement, 2003-05
MEMBERSHIP
Agri-Food Reading Group of the University of Minnesota, 2009 -
Association
of American Geographers, 1996 -
Geographical Perspectives on Women
Specialty Group
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty
Group
Diverse Economies Network, 2007 -