Hunting for food and future title of Cerulli presentation

“Hunting for Food and Future” is the title of a talk to be given by vegan turned hunter Tovar Cerulli at 7 p.m. Monday, March 30, in Ladd Hall, room 307. All are welcome.

What are the ethical and ecological implications of hunting for food? Can wild meat be part of a sustainable food supply in modern America? Why do hunters and hunting—and non-hunters’ understanding of both—matter for the future of environmental conservation? Cerulli will attempt to answer these questions in a presentation about his journey, research and work.

Cerulli has been wondering about humans and other animals since he was a boy. He grew up in Vermont and New Hampshire, where he spent long summer days outdoors, exploring and swimming, gathering wild blueberries for breakfast and reeling in brook trout for dinner.

After college—at Dartmouth, in Japan, and at the New School in Manhattan—he headed back to nature, where his education had begun. He worked for several years as a carpenter. Then, having handled umpteen thousand board-feet of lumber and having burned dozens of cords of firewood, he bought a chain saw and took his ecological values for an enlightening walk in the woods, apprenticing with a forester-logger.

A few years later, having returned to omnivory after a decade as a vegetarian, he decided to take his dietary ethics for a walk in the woods, too, deer rifle in hand.

He has written on hunting, forestry, wildlife, and conservation for Outdoor America, Northern Woodlands, and Massachusetts Wildlife, among others. The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance is his first book.

Cerulli received a B.A. degree from Eugene Lang College of the New School for Social Research. In 2009, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he studies communication, awarded him a graduate school fellowship. He completed his M.A. thesis, "Meat and Meanings: Adult-Onset Hunters' Cultural Discourses of the Hunt," in 2011. He is currently enrolled at UMass as a Ph.D. student and continues to focus his research on food, hunting, and human relationships with the natural world.

His Skidmore presentation is sponsored by the Skidmore Sustainability Office and S-Reps.