About:
In this four-week online series, Spencer Hess and Laurie Johnson will lead a discussion of Wendell Berry’s most influential prose work, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. As the title implies, Berry argues that how we live, how we grow our food, and how we eat are interrelated matters. That “eating is an agricultural act.” The upheavals in the American food economy towards industrial agriculture and the full commoditization of food have had their effect on the strength of families and extended families, small towns and communities, the environment, our way of life, our health, our spiritual lives, and ultimately our happiness. Berry’s insistence that we cannot dislocate people, physically, mentally, and spiritually, without destroying who they are, is a message that is both conservative and radical, as it calls for us to recognize the harm dealt in the name of efficiency and progress, and to live differently at every level to repair the damage done. Berry’s work starts a conversation but calls on others to conclude it. Each session will start with a summary of the most important points of the topics being covered, followed by a discussion.
Schedule:
Thursdays at 7 p.m. US Central Time
October 19, 26, November 2 and 9
Live on Zoom
Registration:
on Eventbrite
or join us at the Worker-Scholar level at Patreon for live access, or the Salt-of-the-Earth tier for access to all of our recorded sessions.
If you are a Catholic Worker and interested in attending, email us at maurinacademy@gmail.com