Jessie Fredlund

Student Fellow

Jessie Fredlund is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology studying the political history of rain in key water catchment in East Africa. Lying at the intersection of environmental history, agrarian studies, the anthropology of religion, and gender studies, her work rethinks urgent issues around climate justice while placing contemporary struggles over water in historical perspective. Her research has awarded grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright, the Global Religion Research Initiative, and the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. She has also taught courses on religion, culture, and social justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and New York University School for Professional Studies and serves on the editorial collective for Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism and Translation. She is currently a Graduate Fellow at the Futures Initiative at CUNY and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in Women’s Studies.

Participating Years

2020–2021

The Agrarian Question Today

In the context of what appears to be inexorable urbanization, it is just as clear that agrarian questions are deeply enmeshed in the political, social, economic, and cultural challenges of contemporary existence. How have newer regimes of capital, particularly those associated with agri-business and food conglomerates, both formed and fractured agricultural communities?