Growing Like Weeds

We don’t talk enough about student-run publications. Yes, I’m biased — I used to work on JURIST, a law student–run publication. But the beauty of student-run projects lies in their scrappiness. I remember searching the internet for the perfect source for an editorial we needed to run. Convincing people to talk about their work may sound easy; convincing them to write about it comes with an entirely different set of logistical challenges.

These obstacles make me appreciate Edge Effects — a digital magazine and podcast on the environment, culture, and place, produced by graduate students within the Center for Culture, History, and Environment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison — even more.

One particular podcast episode from February has stuck with me: Cafeteria Care around the World: A Conversation with Jennifer Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert, and the collection of essays on school food politics discussed in that episode. Each of the chapter essays in Transforming School Food Politics around the World is available online and worth indexing your way through, one essay at a time.

One unexpected insight, among many, is that Canada “remains one of the few affluent countries with no nationally funded school lunch program.” But learning how indigeneity, mobility, and emergency planning inform school food politics makes the weekly dive well worth it. Some of the most ambitious culture storytelling still begins in student-run publications.