Gary Paul Nabhan at UTEP Thursday and Friday

Ethnobotanist, conservationist, farmer and essayist, Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan will lecture and conduct a workshop at UTEP this Thursday and Friday, April 16th and 17th. Dr. Nabhan is best known for his work to recover traditional food practices and maintain the biodiversity of our food supply. He is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Nabhan also co-founded Native Seeds/Search, a clearinghouse of native varieties of agricultural seeds of the American Southwest and northwest Mexico, and founded RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions), "an alliance of food, farming, environmental and culinary advocates who have joined together to identify, restore and celebrate America’s biologically and culturally diverse food traditions through conservation, education, promotion and regional networking."

Thursday evening, April 16th at 6:30 p.m. at Quinn Hall, Rm. 212, Dr. Nabhan will talk about "Arab-American Influences on Food and Farming in the Borderlands".

On Friday from Noon until 1:30 p.m. he will conduct a workshop on "Renewing Traditional Borderland Foods". The workshop will encourage writing family oral histories, poems, and narratives about traditional foods of families in the borderlands and will outline strategies to renew these traditions. The workshop will be conducted at Alumni Lodge at the Peter and Margaret deWetter Center.

The lecture and the workshop are free and open to the public.