Feast for Thought: An Exploration of Food, Society and the Environment by Engaging the Public Liberal Arts featuring Dr. Trae Welborn

The Rural Studies Institute is pleased to invite you to our 2025 virtual noon-day discussion series, "Feast for Thought: An Exploration of Food, Society and the Environment by Engaging the Public Liberal Arts." Join us for an engaging interdisciplinary discussion with Georgia College & State University experts as we explore the intricate relationships between food systems, cultural practices and our planet. Whether you're passionate about cultural history and food, sustainability and environmental issues, food culture or society’s impact on them, this series will provide a thought-provoking look at how our food choices shape the world around us. 

Our featured speaker for March 7, 2025, will be Dr. Trae Welborn, associate professor of History at Georgia College. Welborn will provide expertise in Southern Foodways, regional culture and historical influences of food, society and the environment. Additional information about his work is below.

The goal of this unique series is to foster a vibrant dialogue that highlights our faculty, their expertise and the role of the public liberal arts in exploring agrarian traditions and informing public understanding.  We hope to inspire new ideas and collaborative efforts that honor the extensive agrarian and rural traditions of the public liberal arts.

For more information, please see the attached promotional flyer.

To register for the March 7, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. event, featuring Dr. Trae Welborn, please use the link below.

https://forms.gle/VZoB6c3mKSTezHBj9

Dr. James "Trae" Welborn, associate professor of History at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia, specializes in American cultural history during the Civil War Era (1820-1880) and the long Nineteenth Century (1780-1920). He is the author of Dueling Cultures, Damnable Legacies: Southern Violence and White Supremacy in the Civil War Era (UVA Press, 2023) and Playing at War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games (LSU Press, 2024). His research and teaching focus on the emotional dimensions of evolving conceptions of virtue and vice, especially the role of violence in shaping these cultural values, as well as topics related to Civil War memory and Southern Foodways. He is co-director of the Global Foodways Studies program at Georgia College and co-director of the historical research and education website www.georgiabbqtrails.com.