Dena Seidel: Science Communication, Filmmaking and Food Systems
This learning guide provides a brief overview of Scientific Communication and Food Justice . It includes discussion questions to guide conversations and activities for students and learners of all ages.
Writing Team: Kathy Aguilera, Khalil Deka, Amaya Denson, Olivia Fried, Abbey Leibert, and Andrew Serrao
Environmental Storyteller Spotlight: Filmmaker and Science Communicator Dena Seidel
Dena Seidel is an interdisciplinary social scientist who combines anthropology, ethnographic filmmaking, science storytelling and STEM learning methodologies. Seidel is currently a science communication and food systems researcher in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. Trained in both anthropology (MA) and filmmaking, Seidel’s research focuses on the potential of ethnographic science filmmaking to connect scientists, science communities and research with public audiences. As an educator, Seidel seeks to connect students from all backgrounds to science through collaborative storytelling in trusting partnership with real world researchers. Dena Seidel is an award-winning science filmmaker, a published short story author, and the architect of the university’s first Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Filmmaking having developed the first accredited film production programs at Rutgers and having served as the founding director of the Rutgers Center for Digital Filmmaking (now Rutgers Filmmaking Center). Seidel is also an honorary Ambassador-at-Large for Research and Academic Partnerships for Pohnpei State in the Federated States of Micronesia, traveling often to the vast Pacific island nation as part of a Rutgers Food System Science team supporting sustainable and culturally based food system development.
Understanding the Environmental Story & Issue
Food Justice and Food Systems in Central New York
Everyone deserves access to healthy and affordable food. Food connects us to our land and seas, our culture and heritage, our ecosystems, our communities and our economies. We give food as offerings of friendship and hospitality. Food brings people together, builds relationships and trust. The way we access and share our food is called a food pathway and those pathways are filled with stories. Our food stories reveal the personal, cultural, and scientific underpinnings of what we eat and how we eat it.
We all need food to live happy and healthy lives, but for some in our community getting good food is difficult. Because of historically racist policies, such as grocery redlining, people have to rely on convenience stores and fast food, which usually offer less nutritious choices. In Syracuse, local organizations like Syracuse Grows and the Syracuse-Onondaga Food System Alliance are working to make sure that all people have access to the food they need. This includes advocating for more city-based grocery stores, planting community gardens, and sharing food knowledge. This form of advocacy and social justice work is often referred to as Food Justice.
Food Justice, as defined by Boston University’s Community Service Center, is a movement dedicated to guaranteeing that everyone has access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food, doing so in a way that also advocates for the safety and well-being of the workers involved in the food production process. Healthy food is not equally available to everyone.
Food justice aims to tackle issues such as land ownership, agricultural practices, workers' rights, and the injustices experienced by historically marginalized communities. Marginalized communities are populations of people who are discriminated against socially, economically, and politically based on many personal characteristics like gender, race, and ethnicity. Within marginalized communities, there are disparities in food access and affordability. This is seen in locations such as Syracuse, New York, as many residents struggle with limited access to nutritious and affordable food. These challenges are further heightened by the historical injustices these specific communities of color have faced.
In some Syracuse neighborhoods there are no grocery stores, which means people have to travel far to get ingredients for their meals at home. This lack of food access in an area is sometimes called a food desert. But in recent years, food justice activists have pushed for the term “food apartheid” to be used instead. A desert happens naturally, but grocery stores chains and people in power have systematically chosen not to invest in marginalized neighborhoods. It’s a choice that’s been made to not build grocery stores in certain neighborhoods, and one that activists and grassroots organizations are trying hard to fix. Too many people in our communities experience food apartheid, relying on cheap, highly processed and unhealthy foods that lead to diet related diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
"Food rights groups in Syracuse seek to confront and transform this apartheid through advocacy and education. For instance, Syracuse Grows, a grassroots network run entirely by volunteers, uses its resources to promote food justice through advocacy and education. The organization champions urban food production in order to create “a community where everyone has the equal opportunity to produce healthy and culturally appropriate food.” The network includes20 gardens filled with vegetables and herbs that are culturally appropriate for different communities across the city.
Syracuse Grows hosts workshops that educate community members on food production, urban agriculture, and self-sufficiency. Not only does this provide communities with healthy food options, but community gardens are known to promote sustainable agriculture with tactics like organic gardening and composting. They increase plant biodiversity in the area and with proper city planning can restore vacant spaces. The appearance of these gardens in disinvested neighborhoods can provide a rounded educational experience on this form of advocacy in food justice.
Community gardens are just one way to address the way people get their food. How people grow, know, and buy their food is all part of what is called a food system. Food systems involve many actors on all stages from farmers and fishers to food preparers and processors to sellers and consumers. At the same time, food systems account for a quarter of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
The Syracuse-Onondaga Food System Alliance (SOFSA), is dedicated to transforming the local food system in Onondaga County. The alliance brings together a diverse group of collaborators, including local farmers, food distributors, chefs, and public health advocates, to address issues of food insecurity, sustainability, and equity around the area. SOFSA focuses on creating a resilient and inclusive food system that works through strategic planning, collaboration, and community involvement. They work alongside local farms, healthcare institutions and nonprofit organizations. This dedication to bolstering our food system is vital as the demand for food is projected to increase by 60 percent by 2050.
Food systems scientists are supporting local farmers and fishers impacted by climate change by finding innovative ways to support production while fighting climate change. Filmmaker Dena Seidel works to tell these food stories of farmers and scientists to highlight this critical need in our daily lives.
Indigenous knowledge and food systems
In central New York, we live on the current and ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee people. With six nations comprising the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Syracuse exists on the stolen land of Onondaga Nation – the people of the hills. Still governed by their traditional government, the Onondaga Nation stands as one of the oldest democratic nations on Turtle Island.
Having thrived on this Earth for millennia before European settlers, Indigenous peoples have a wealth of knowledge regarding the land and how to care for it. Living on Haudenosaunee lands, we have the privilege of being surrounded by this wealth of knowledge, but more importantly we have the responsibility to treat their wisdom with respect, giving deference to its origins and listening to Indigenous voices.
With 574 federally-recognized Native nations (with more unrecognized) in the United States alone and more than 5,000 different Indigenous nations around the world, it is important to recognize that there is not just one Indigenous way of knowing. However, the idea of reciprocity and caring for the land as it cares for us is central to Indigenous knowledge as a whole and informs the Indigenous approach to food and food systems.
In practicing this reciprocity, many Indigenous nations leave gifts for the land like tobacco or coffee after taking food from it, expressing gratitude for all that it has done for them. Another way of doing this is by respecting plants and animals as sovereign beings. For example, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe adopted a law in 2018 recognizing the rights of manoomin, or wild rice, a culturally-significant food to the nation and many other Anishinaabe peoples.
Indigenous ways of knowing provide an approach to food systems that is sustainable and considers the wellbeing of the Earth. This is done through practices such as seasonal rounds, seed saving and growing certain foods together to improve growth, like corn, squash and beans – the three sisters.
While traditional indigenous knowledge of food systems is abundant it is also often taken for granted, and Indigenous peoples’ food sovereignty is often disrespected. We have the responsibility to consider our country’s history and current suppression of Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.
We also have a responsibility to involve Indigenous peoples when using their traditional knowledge, respecting the policy of “nothing about us without us.” Through her work in Micronesia, Dena Seidel has worked with local Indigenous leaders and stresses the importance of co-creating and respecting the stories that those communities want to be told.
Dena Seidel: Scientific Communication
and Narrative Filmmaking
In scientific research, objectivity is the idea of removing yourself from your research “in pursuit of a truth that is larger than yourself.” Objectivity is what scientists strive for within the communication of their research. For good reason, scientific research should not be influenced by personal values, opinions, or feelings. A side effect of this objective approach is that scientists and researchers have struggled to tell the stories that underpin their research.
Through her work as an award-winning science filmmaker and science communicator, Dena Seidel has worked to redefine how scientific stories should be shared. Seidel discusses this disconnect when talking about her decades of work in telling these stories. She says that historically in science communication, it was widely accepted that the general public were “blank slates” with gaps in their scientific knowledge. It was thought that with the outreach of more information from scientists to the general public, the disconnect between these two groups of people could be bridged. This model, known as the deficit model, has now been understood to be ineffective in science communication. People do not want information to simply be thrown at them from scientists, rather they want to learn about science through an emotional bond shared between the speaker and listener.
Through her experiences working with and documenting scientific research, Seidel has found that engagement builds trust. While Seidel has made numerous award-winning feature films, she stresses the importance in recognizing that with today’s technology, almost anyone can be a filmmaker. An empowering sentiment, but with this power comes great responsibility. Sometimes, filmmakers have come into scientific spaces and misrepresented a scientist’s research in order to heighten the drama of a story. It is vital that a scientist’s research is portrayed accurately and in a context that supports the scientist's larger question at hand.
In scientific research, collaboration is key, and the same can be said for science filmmaking and science communication. Seidel argues that co-creation and co-ownership are major components shared between a scientist and filmmaker when transforming their scientific data and process into a narrative story. Sediel says to tell more accurate and compelling stories, scientists and storytellers need to work together. You can see this across her work and career.
In her award winning film Antarctic Edge: 70 Degrees South, Dena Seidel demonstrates a masterful fusion of narrative filmmaking and real-life experience. The film does not convey the idea that our climate is "doomed," but it does portray the genuine nature of the climate change occurring in Antarctica. It tells the stories of the scientists who are conducting research in the area under extremely difficult conditions. As a result, the film has a profound effect on viewers. It helps everyone realize that we need to reconsider our course of action because climate change is occurring right now.
Seidel says the story will always belong to the storyteller, but the video is the scientist's data. Being invited as a filmmaker to document a scientist’s data and the journey to acquire it is a privilege, and as the storyteller it is your job to protect that data and support the scientist.
More than anything, the general public wants to be meaningfully connected to scientists. Objectivity portrays scientists as cold, arrogant, or emotionless. In Seidel’s films, her approach transforms science from a cold, hard process into a “science-in-action” narrative. One way Seidel accomplishes this is by modeling the rudimentary scientific method, used by scientists, next to the tumultuous hero's journey, used by storytellers. Thereby transforming a scientist's hypothesis into a dramatic question that leads them on a scientific journey. In seminars, Seidel argues that “within a story, scientists are characters in search of a goal that is larger than themselves.” Throughout a scientist’s journey, they will experience trials and tribulations, self-reflection, and lessons just as a hero in a storybook would. In a fresh approach to science communication, Seidel captures these moments as powerful media that connects people to scientists, and their research.
Some Terms to Know
Food Justice: A social justice movement dedicated to ensuring the access to nutritional, affordable, and culturally appropriate food for all. (Boston University) An example of the food justice movement in Syracuse is Syracuse Grows, which helps broaden the access to food within the city by implementing, maintaining, and educating about community gardens and urban food production (Syracuse Grows).
Culturally-Appropriate Food: The idea that food must be understood within cultural identities, with regards to not only the food itself but also in how and who prepares and consumes it (Community Commons).
Food Deserts: Specific geographic areas (usually urban), where residents lack access either by affordability or distance to healthy nutritious foods. (Food Empowerment Project) ‘Food deserts’ is a great entryway term to begin thinking about the issues around food accessibility, however it is not the most inclusive and descriptive term. The term runs the risk of framing the issue of food inaccessibility as “natural” which is not true. This is why scholars have shifted to different terms and ideas like “Food Apartheid” instead.
Food Apartheid: Karen Washington, a food justice advocate, coined this term to reflect the linked social, racial, and economic factors that contribute to food accessibility, rather than solely the geographic location of residents (University of Michigan News). This accentuates the fact that the food justice movement is a complex social movement with connecting factors to other social movements, for example food apartheid highlights the need to acknowledge specific communities because of existing social structures that create this inequity. For example people of color tend to have less access to nutritious, healthy and affordable food, especially in highly segregated areas like Syracuse, this is linked to not only their geographic locations within the city but the structures that work against them to form this inequity in food access.
Food Sovereignty: Another term for thinking about food accessibility. This includes the right to access affordable, healthy, and sustainable food. “It (food sovereignty) puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.” (U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance) A way to conceptualize this term is to think about who has the power to make decisions about where, what and how expensive food is for a particular community. Food sovereignty calls for this decision to be made by the members of the community, not by some external entity.
Narrative Filmmaking: A way of making films to convey a story, usually with much structure around dialogue, scenes, music, etc. Every component of the film is structured in a way to best tell the story the creator wants to tell. (Center For Home Movies) Dena Seidel and her students use Narrative filmmaking in their work to convey the work of science and scientists into engaging and meaningful stories.
Discussion Questions
How have you used food to bring people together? What is your strongest food memory? Why do you eat what you eat? How do Food Systems affect your own food stories?
Many of our habits, likes and dislikes around food come from our upbringing. Think about the types of foods you were brought up on? Did they differ from others around you? Did your family consume a specific type of food that was difficult to access due to your geographic location? How did/does that affect how you ate?
Dena Seidel’s main focus is science communication through filmmaking. How do you think this way of storytelling is beneficial to a movement like the food justice movement? How does it make the subject more accessible to larger audiences?
Much of the food we consume is bound up in complex systems on local, national, and even global scales. Think about where you and your family get most of your food. Is it the local farmers market, the grocery store, grown in your backyard/ community, etc. ? Then think of how that food arrived to you: is it local, national, global? Why is it important to think about this system when we make the decisions about the food we eat? Does everyone in your community have the ability to make that kind of decision?
Activities & Prompts
Below are writing prompts and activities for learners of all ages.
The following prompts and activities are all based around the films of Dena Seidel and her co-collaborators.
Prompts around Generation at Risk (Childhood obesity in NJ)
Summary: Generation at Risk is a short film that explores the intersectionality of childhood obesity in New Jersey. This 18-minute video weaves the testimonials and experiences of residents, healthcare providers, and politicians. The film challenges many assumptions around childhood obesity, and ultimately demonstrates how there is a larger environmental issue at hand.
Think and Discuss:
What do you think testimonials from professional individuals like Corey Booker and Darrin Anderson do for the film and its narrative? How are the testimonials from the mothers living in these areas different? In what other ways do they enhance the narrative?
Were there key words used repeatedly throughout this story sample? How were they defined and given context?
How did the story sample address the intersectionality of issues contributing to childhood obesity? How did they all tie in to create one, large environmental issue?
Writing Prompt: Growing up, where did your guardians buy food? What was or is the closest grocery store to you? What kinds of food would you want to see at your local grocery store?
Watch: Mysteries of 9° North (Underwater volcanoes and their ecosystem
Summary: Mysteries of 9° North is a documentary that explores aquatic species and their rare and unique habitats that lie upon active, underwater volcanoes. Extraordinary microorganisms live in these habitats, turning volcanic chemicals into food and energy. Various scientists exploring throughout the film are gathering vital data that could reveal the origins of life on earth.
Think and Discuss:
What large question are the scientists in pursuit of? After watching the trailer, when do we come to learn what this question is? How is timing and framing information important in a narrative?
Writing Prompt: What is a food system or a component of one that you could analyze? What types of testimonials and experiences would you want to highlight? How would you frame the data around it?
Prompts around Life on the Edge (Oyster farming and Horseshoe crabs)
Summary: Life on The Edge is a film that explores New Jersey’s coastal ecosystems. It analyzes the intricate relationships particularly between horseshoe crabs, oyster farms, and red knot birds. The film highlights several scientists' efforts to understand these relationships and their work to make them thrive together.
Think and Discuss:
How does the scarcity of the horseshoe crabs eggs drive the larger narrative around the scarcity of food sources?
How does the intersection between the horseshoe and oyster ecosystems comment on the intersectionality of food systems
Writing Prompt: In your local grocery store, have you ever had difficulty finding or getting a certain item? Do you know why the grocery store did not or could get the item in stock? Has a product you loved become impossible or harder to find?
Watch: Amaranth
Summary: Amaranth is a science film that highlights a scientist's intense research involved behind the cultivation and production of our produce. Particularly, focusing on Amaranth, a resilient, leafy green or red culturally preferred produce option. Amaranth can be grown in dry, hot regions, a desirable trait as humans face climate change.
Think and Discuss:
There is a cultural preference for the color of Amaranth. Experts in the video suggest it has to do with each culture's respective climates. How can certain aspects of a culture circle back to larger environmental issues and themes?
How does the moment where Tori Rosen gets lab results that she doesn’t quite understand yet further drive the narrative?
Writing Prompt: Think of your own culture, is there a particular food item that you like to enjoy? What is it? Is it locally accessible to you? How often do you get to enjoy it?
Selected Additional Resources
Organizations:
Syracuse Grows: Syracuse Grows works to promote food access and food education through providing gardens throughout the Syracuse area. They are trying to create an environment where everybody has an equal chance and opportunity to produce healthy and sustainable foods within the community.
Syracuse Cooperative Market: Syracuse Co-Op is working to help provide more sustainable food to individuals within the Syracuse community. It is an online grocery store where individuals are able to purchase local, fresh, and sustainable meat and produce.
Syracuse Urban Food Forest Project: This group promotes community gardens, and emphasizes human connection to food and where it comes from. It focuses specifically on foraging within the Syracuse area.
Falling Fruit: This group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that shows where to find edible plants on public streets. This is an international program that is entirely volunteer-run. They focus on promoting food education and food sovereignty and various cities across the world. They are trying to educate individuals on foraging strategies and other places where individuals can find food.
Additional Videos:
Exploring food sustainability - This video provides information on food sustainability and what it is and why it is important. Watching it will help give the audience a better understanding of what exactly is meant by sustainability in relation to food.
Hunger, Nutrition, and Health Sessions: Improve food access and affordability (youtube.com) - This video helps explain how we can improve food access and affordability and explains how complex of a process it can be.
Meet Ron Finley The Gangster Gardener in South Central LA - This video is about Ron Finley the Gangster Gardener in South Central Los Angeles, he focuses on urban farming and community farming, he claims “to change a community you have to change the composition of the soil, we are the soil”. He also works at schools to teach kids “gardening is gangster” and that working with the earth is cool.
Angie Ferguson: “Onondaga Nation & Food Sovereignty” This video is all about SOFSA and how the Onondaga Nation in Upstate/Central New York is working on dealing with and trying to fix the problem of food sovereignty in their community.
Helpful Links:
What Is Food Access and Why Is Access to Food Important? - This article goes into depth on what exactly food access is, why it is important, and why it is something we should care about. It helps provide a general overview of the broad topic of accessibility when it comes to food.
Take the time to learn about issues impacting Indigenous food/limiting sovereignty such as the destruction of food sources like the bison, assimilation to European practices and dispossession of the lands they are indigenous to. Organizations such as Indigikitchen and NATIFS are created by Indigenous people and are great resources to learn about Indigenous practices.
This document is a general summary of a project called Food Plan-CNY, led by Matthew Potteiger and Evan Weissman. Its main goals include the assessment, coordination, education and improvement of CNY’s current food system. These assessments and recommendations are outlined in the document.
Imports Make Up Growing Share of US Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. Between 2007 and 2021, the percentage of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable availability supplied by imports grew from 50 to 60 percent for fresh fruit and from 20 to 38 percent for fresh vegetables. The import share increased by more than 20 percentage points during this period for ten crops: asparagus, avocados, bell peppers, blueberries, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, raspberries, snap beans, and tomatoes.There are 30,650 farms in New York state. They are struggling to compete against the cost of imported foods. They need customers, but a handful of corporations control our food from farm to fork. Small farmers in America are struggling to survive. The US government subsidizes large producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice—not fruit and vegetable growers.
What is food sustainability and why is it important?- This is an interactive website with videos and diagrams that explain why we need to pay attention to food sustainability and shows where and why it is a problem. It would be an informative website for anybody interested in food sustainability.
Syracuse Salt Potatoes History & Recipe: With Syracuse and salt having a long and successful relationship this provides a fun recipe on how to make salt potatoes as well as providing a brief history about Syracuse and salt potatoes. It is a fun interactive recipe to provide a healthy and delicious meal!
