Week 12
I wasn't crazy about the last Grad Speaker Series session I went to, but I thought I'd give it another go. Now that I've switched jobs, the Grad Room is quite literally 4 minutes away from my office, so I didn't really have a good excuse not to check it out. I only ended up staying for 2 of the lectures, but I really enjoyed it this time!
Date: July 26, 2017
Event/Activity: Grad Speaker Series: Human Geography
Capacity: Student
Found: Newsletters
Host: Grad Room
Link: https://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/currentstudents/Pages/Graduate-Speaker-Series.aspx
Description:
Michael Chrobok, PhD candidate (Human Geography) "Disrupting the Food Desert/Oasis Binary: Ethnic Grocery Retailers and Food Access in Humbermede, Toronto"
The term "food desert" has been used to identify residential areas where people may have a limited ability to access healthy, high quality, and affordable food due to an absence of grocery stores. Such food deserts have been seen by some to exist in opposition to "food oases," areas where grocery purchasing venues are abundant. The recent literature on food deserts, oases, and access more broadly, however, often disregards '"ethnic" grocery retailers as sources of food, or assumes them to be attractive shopping sites for all individuals. Moreover, this body of research frequently frames access as an issue of spatial proximity to grocery stores. Drawing on interviews I conducted with residents of Humbermede, Toronto, I explore how food accessibility is perceived and experienced in a culturally-diverse neighbourhood where the only grocery retailers present are ethnic in nature. I argue that cultural identity-related factors and class-based aspects of one's life circumstances -- not merely distance -- coalesce to influence understandings of one's food retail environment and one's store choices. Because these characteristics can differ on individual bases, multiple interpretations of the level of food retail provision in a neighbourhood are possible. These findings highlight the limitations of using simple labels ("deserts" or "oases") to describe grocery shopping landscapes; as this research shows, food shoppers are not homogenous, all retailers are not equally attractive to all consumers, and food access has important socio-cultural, economic, and spatiotemporal dimensions.
Isa Urrutia, PhD candidate (Human Geography) "Eating disorders in the margins. On troubled eating experiences in the Latinx community"
This presentation provides a brief overview of my doctoral research, which lies at the intersection of inquiries on bodies, mental health, activism, experiences of living "in between" cultural experiences and across borders, and experiences of being racialized or otherwise marginalized through the presumption of being "out of place." My research asks: how might one create grassroots organizing spaces of healing and recovery that empower latinx folks to heal and reclaim our bodies, and how might they best be configured to help us understand experiences of eating disorders and troubled eating practices?
Experience:
- Headed over to the Grad Room (they had pizza!)
- This time, the room was nearly full, there were lots of people watching for this one!
- Had to leave after the second speaker - I was getting exhausted and I had to do some readings
- The moderator/organizer of the series was very soft spoken, but had great questions and introduced guests well
- Having grad students talk about their work in 15-20 minute chunks actually worked out really well; it was enough to get me curious, and I wasn't immediately bored
 |  |
What I learned:
- Human geography is so cool! I admittedly had no idea what human geography encapsulated
- The study of food is neat xD
- People in areas with a huge range of ethnic grocery stores may still perceive their area as a food desert even though it could be consider a food oasis (range of reasons: identity, ability to
- There's some really cool research around grocery stores and their impact on neighbourhoods
-M