A PLACE AT THE TABLE: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF A UNIVERSITY’S CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A “LOCAL FOOD” NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION A Dissertation by KAREN ADELE LEMKE Submitted to the Graduate School at Appalachian State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May 2019 Educational Leadership Doctoral Program Reich College of Education A PLACE AT THE TABLE: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF A UNIVERSITY’S CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A “LOCAL FOOD” NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION A Dissertation by KAREN ADELE LEMKE May 2019 APPROVED BY: Alecia Youngblood Jackson, Ph.D. Chairperson, Dissertation Committee Jacqueline Ignatova, Ph.D. Member, Dissertation Committee Garrett Alexandrea McDowell, Ph.D. Member, Dissertation Committee Tracy Goodson-Espy, Ed.D. Director, Educational Leadership Doctoral Program Mike McKenzie, Ph.D. Dean, Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies Copyright by Karen Adele Lemke 2019 All Rights Reserved Abstract A PLACE AT THE TABLE: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF A UNIVERSITY’S CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A “LOCAL FOOD” NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION Karen Adele Lemke B.A., Lawrence University M.A., University of Northern Colorado Ed.S. Appalachian State University Ed.D. Appalachian State University Dissertation Committee Chairperson: Alecia Youngblood Jackson, Ph.D. In this feminist ethnography, I returned to the small rural public Hispanic-serving university (Southwest State University, pseudonym) in the southwestern U.S. where I formerly worked in order to critique how practices of inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders during the curriculum development process reproduce inherited privilege. I examined texts such as reports, emails, meeting notes, and student surveys, and I interviewed university personnel and community members active with the Local Foods Coalition who had been invited to advise on the new Food Studies major. These data revealed paternalistic neoliberal efficiency mindsets which perpetuated exclusion of minoritized peoples’ perspectives. I used feminist theory to describe and critique the power structures and their functions. This theoretical grounding enabled me to dive more deeply into neoliberalism as a framework for analysis of curriculum development in higher education. iv I focused on three elements of feminist theory (challenging authority, analyzing power structures and their reproduction, and naming paternalism) in order to develop a critique of neoliberalism in higher education curriculum development. I chose several elements of neoliberalism to name phenomena present in this curriculum development process, including deregulation of environmental and labor protections which benefit corporations, externalization of costs, efficiency mindsets, designing for standardization, privatization of what used to be public services, framing people as consumers, and commodification. Keyword search terms include: adjunctification, automation, brand, commodification, commodity agriculture, community partners, consent, conventional agriculture, consumers, corporatization, crisis, curriculum development, declining enrollment, democratic process, dignity, direct market agriculture, diversity, economic development, efficiency, ethnography, exclusion, exploitation, extraction, extractive, faculty, farm worker, feminist epistemology, feminist theory, food studies, gentrification, globalization, higher education, Hispanic Serving Institution, inclusion, inheritance, local as a brand, local food economy, minoritized, Minority Serving Institution, neoliberalism, passion, paternalism, planning process, politics of difference, power structures, precarity, producers, reconciliation, regeneration, regenerative, relocalization, representation, reproduction, rural, shared governance, sustainability, thinking with theory, value-added, Whiteness. v Acknowledgments Thank you to Dr Alecia Jackson, Dr Jacqueline Ignatova, and Dr Garrett McDowell for working with me through this dissertation process. Thank you to Dr Hunter Boylan, Dr Barbara Bonham, Dr Patricia Levine-Brown, Mr Wes Anthony, Ms Barbara Calderwood, Ms Connie Woolard and Ms Angela Turrisi in the National Center for Developmental Education for their support with my research assistantship, many material supports such as office space, printing and computer use, and hours of advice plus tasty treats. Thank you to Denise deRibert and the Kellogg Institute which started me off on my Certificate in Developmental Education and the first courses which would become the stepping stones to my Ed.S. and Ed.D. Without the scaffolding of these initial forays into post-masters research, I would not have had the confidence to pursue the doctorate. Thank you to Dr Audrey Dentith, Dr Tracy Goodson-Espy, Ms Susan Musilli and Ms Audrey Jones in the doctoral program for supporting the administration of the doctoral program and for funding my travel to conferences where I was able to present initial findings from this research. Thank you to my classmates in cohorts 21, 22 and 23 who thought with me, challenged me, laughed and cried with me, and read drafts: writing does not have to be a solitary task. Thank you to the Appalachian State University Goodnight Family Sustainable Development Department for assistantship funding support which helped me identify what other universities are doing to develop Sustainable Food Studies as a discipline in support of Appalachian State University vi developing Food Studies as a discipline. I am eager to see how the AppalFRESH (Appalachian Food Research for Equity, Sustainability and Health) Collaborative continues to grow. I think it is remarkable that I had an all-female dissertation committee. The chair of the doctoral program is a woman. The dean of the Reich College of Education is a woman. The chancellor of Appalachian State University is a woman. The president of the University of North Carolina system is a woman. The secretary of education is a woman. The future is female. The present is female. I think back to my earliest educational memories, and I was a problem student. When I was in fourth grade, my parents came to parent teacher conferences to find that my desk was situated at the front of the room, right up against the teacher’s, which was her way I suppose of keeping me on task. One teacher used masking tape to connect my chair to my desk to keep me from wandering to the window or the bookcase or wherever else I seemed to not be able to control myself from wandering to. I was in special education gym class. I was in the gifted and talented program until I got kicked out for talking too much. A teacher friend, Molly Hughes, pointed out that I am therefore thrice exceptional: physically, intellectually and behaviorally. I am so grateful to my teachers for not giving up on me, for encouraging me. I also had a male professor who said I would never be an A student, but that there were “other ways” that I could get an A. I am glad I took the B and did not give up on myself. vii Thank you to the people who have helped me understand more about how difference and power function, notably mentoring me through my non-classroom learning of the experiences of non-White people. Joe Green spent countless hours talking through African- American experiences of education with me, substantially impacting my understanding of not only policy but my blindnesses to how my Whiteness functions. There are so many ways that the formal curriculum has intentionally miseducated us, and generous friends like Joe, Meagan Smith, Johari Cole, and Carolyn Smith love me enough to point out when I am “thinking like a White person.” Thank you to the people who opened their homes to me which made my doctoral education possible. Dr Vachel Miller, Sarah Miller and their children Galen, Sidra and Caspian let me live in their home in Boone, NC, for my first two semesters, and I felt like a member of their family. Dr Katrina Plato and her son Abraham shared their home with me for the next two semesters, and it was a wonderful contemplative space for me to grow as a scholar. Dr Mona Abinader let me sleep on a cot on her kitchen floor for three weeks in August 2017 while I prepared my prospectus for defense, and she always made sure I had good food to eat while she carefully read my drafts. Cynthia Choice let me take over her guest room for seven weeks as I conducted fieldwork, and we shared whatever good food people sent with me from my interviews, including two 25 lb bags of potatoes harvested that day. viii My interviewees were so generous with their time, and food, and several cooked dinner for me to show me what local food meant to them. Again, I came home almost every night with armloads of food. That bag of potatoes sustained me through six months of dissertating. Growing up with limited finances, I learned to appreciate good food and the people willing to share it with me. Thank you to the diaspora of people from the region who continue to do wonderful work, The Work, of (re)building our food system. Thank you to Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, the local food advocates who welcomed me to the work being done here in Watauga County: Dave Walker, Courtney Baines, Carol Coulter, Sadikshya Aryal, Debbie Bauer, Lynae Ball, Jacqui Ignatova and many others. John Eshelman at NC State University shared his reporting on the Appalachian Foodshed Project with me, and Susan Clark of Virginia Tech talked me through the development of their minor in Civic Agriculture and Food Systems. I am also grateful to the county level food policy councils and regional advocacy work coordinated by Abby Piner at NC State University’s Center for Environmental Farming Systems and Community Food Strategies. Thank you to the beekeepers who kept me connected to beekeeping in these years that I have been in school. Elizabeth Randall, Marty Hanks, Galen Ballentine, Bill Brinton, Meghan Ibach, Liz Howard, Tony Williamson, Josie Varela and Aaron Miltenberger helped me remember why I got curious about all this agricultural stuff in the first place, to figure out ix why my bees were dying and what I might do to help.