Andrea Most

Andrea Most is a Professor of American Literature, Environmental Studies, and Jewish Studies in the Department of English at the University of Toronto and is affiliated with the Centre for Jewish Studies, the School of the Environment, the Department for the Study of Religion, and the Centre for the Study of the United States. Committed to breaking down divisions between scholarship and public life, research and teaching, mind and body, nature and culture, Prof. Most teaches experiential courses on food and environmental literature, conducts multidisciplinary community-engaged research, and speaks widely on the local food and environmental movements.

Prof. Most is co-founder and Creative Director of Bela Farm, a 99-acre site for experimental agriculture, art, performance, education, and advocacy around urgent environmental issues. Prof. Most’s current research initiative, The Persephone Project, brings together scholars, writers, artists, farmers and scientists both in Toronto and at Bela Farm for cross-disciplinary experiments in ecological design, health sciences, and embodied life writing geared towards articulating a new feminism for an overheated planet. She will also be teaching a series of experiential graduate seminars in ecocriticism at Bela Farm, beginning in spring 2018, with support from an ATLAS grant from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

From the beginning of her career, Prof. Most’s writing has broken new ground. Her first book, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Harvard, 2004) began an ongoing conversation about the ethnic and racial dynamics of the musical theatre and won the MLA/Kurt Weill Prize for the best book in Music Theater. Her second book, Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America (NYU, 2013) was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Prof. Most’s new book project, A Pain in the Neck, draws on findings from the Persephone Project to tell a deeply personal story about how climate change and the discovery of the human microbiome are transforming the way we think about – and write -- our lives.

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