This course is hosted by OLLI at Colorado State University (CSU). Participants will be “in course” via Zoom with members from OLLI at CSU.

Join author and sociology professor Michael Carolan in discussing the sociological roots of cognition, humility, and care. Author of the book A Decent Meal: Building Empathy in a Divided America (Stanford University Press, 2021), Michael draws from not only this text but more than 25 years of research investigating how we think about the world and why we so often disagree profoundly with each other over things of immense importance.

Instructor: Dr. Michael Carolan is a professor of sociology at Colorado State University. He is also a visiting professor at Ruralis Research Institute in Trondheim, Norway, and a research affiliate at the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He has been studying food systems since the late 1990s. In addition to having published more than 200 articles and more than a dozen books, Michael regularly writes pieces for public audiences, which have appeared in outlets such as The Conversation, Bloomberg, Mental Floss, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Magazine, Salon, and New Food Economy. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa and his Ph.D. from Iowa State University.