Fogo, Política, Bife, y Soja

Fire, Politics, Beef, and Soy: The North Looks Amazônia Again is the title of my presentation at the Second International Seminar on Literature and Linguistics. I was very honored to be invited to speak to this gathering of scholars at UNIR, the Federal University of Rondônia in the western Amazon region of Brazil.

It was at this campus and in surrounding communities that I conducted three months of dissertation research in 1996, and to which I returned for smaller projects in 2000 and 2003.

(The Google Slides presentation is full of links to examples of discourse on the Amazon. Click everything!)

NOLA: Louisiana or Latin America?

This post is to provide access to the slides I used in my presentation New Orleans as a Latin American City, part of the BSU-LACS celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. I gave the presentation as a special session of my Honors Colloquium, New Orleans: Global City.

Africa in Latin America

This slideshow will not be very coherent for those who were not present for my September 16 presentation, but is provided here for those who were present and wish to follow up on some of the included links.

Coffee in Costa Rica: January 2020 Travel Course

Sign up now! Applications are due Sept 27

BSU Study Abroad

Program cost $3,275 includes airfare from Boston,
tuition, meals, guides, lodging, transportation
-- and a lot of coffee!

Please join me for Geography of Coffee, a travel course in Costa Rica, January 3-14, 2020. This Bridgewater State University course is open to all; our credits transfer easily. This will be our first travel course in Costa Rica, building on more than a decade of experience in neighboring Nicaragua.

Costa Rica originated the concept of ecotourism -- the idea of using sustainable tourism both as an effective form of environmental education and an economic alternative to deforestation. Our ecotourism will focus on the coffeelands and the people who sustain and are sustained by coffee. We will also visit volcanoes and learn about their connection to coffee. Part of our visit will be hosted by the Bribri indigenous community.

This course is offered mainly for undergraduate credit, but I will work with graduate students in any discipline to develop extra learning activities for graduate credit. Credits transfer easily from BSU to other institutions, and I have nearly always had at least one student from another university in this course.

Also note that BSU undergraduates can take this for credit even if they have already completed GEOG 295 in Nicaragua. Much of the content will be similar, but each country in coffeelands is unique!

Applications are due September 27, 2018. Applications, syllabus, and other details are at
 BSU Study Abroad.

Back Story:

Those who know me know that the coffeelands of Nicaragua have become a second home since I first visited in 2006. Over 100 students have made the journey with me, and since 2009 all of those trips have been led by Matagalpa Tours, . All of the MT guides share my passion for experiential learning through the medium of coffee, and they will be bringing that same expertise to this journey.
Sadly -- for reasons I detail under the #sosnicaragua tag on my main blog and social media -- we cannot go to Nicaragua for the foreseeable future, but ecotourism and coffee in Costa Rica are legendary, so this will be an equally rewarding experience.

Borderland Nachos

I use Facebook as a microblog, pointing friends and followers to posts on various blogs and review sites. Recently, all of the links to my "main" blog were severed by Facebook without explanation.

The action was probably triggered by somebody who did not agree with a post in migration or the environment. I learned of the censorship when ¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Nacho! -- my celebration of the inventor of nachos -- was cited for violating community standards. Hmmm.

As close as I could get to Ignacio's original recipe:
Vermont cheddar instead of Wisconsin

Summer School with the Coffee Maven

Coffee is not the only thing I teach. This summer, I am offering four classes -- two very much on the ground and two sections of one course online. These are New Bedford: Maritime City (two weeks in June), Coffee Week (a single week in August), and two sections of Environmental Geography (five weeks each, completely online). All of these courses are easily transferred to other universities.

Information about the courses is in the links above; registration details are at bridgew.edu/summer.