What book, article, or media resource ought to be part of a food studies canon that isn’t already? 

The Graduate Journal of Food Studies seeks a collection of short essays (approximately 750 words) by graduate students who work or read in the field of food studies. Each essay will identify a book, article, or multimedia resource that the contributor considers ignored, underserved, or underacknowledged in the field of food studies. These texts may take the form of fiction, primary sources, journal articles, edited collections, poetry, academic monographs from within or outside the field, or writing outside of academia. Multimedia resources may include films, art exhibits, podcasts, or other creative outlets. 

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests across the world, the 400th year since the start of North American slavery, and the ongoing ramifications of the European colonial project that are being called to account, we are particularly hopeful that contributors consider sources by Black scholars, about Black lives, or that challenge racial bias in food studies and foodways more broadly. A suggested bibliography can be found below though it is meant to be suggestive, not demonstrative or exhaustive. 

This thematic call for participation echoes the work of Catherine Peters, former editor-in-chief at GJFS. Building on her inaugural issue of Cite This, and to buttress the canon series “Food Studies (In)Digestion”, we are particularly interested in essays highlighting ideas that might unseat or redress the hegemonic subject position through which food studies has often been produced and articulated. The essay should summarize the piece’s contributions and offer reasons why it should be included as part of the food studies canon. Once published, the final collection of essays is intended to be a collaboratively constructed resource for scholars interested in extending and unsettling the foundations of the field.

Reading Recommendations Related to Black Lives 

The following bibliography is in no way suggestive or authoritative but aims to gather sources that center Black voices, Black scholarship, and how Black communities experience food. This list is also not exhaustive, so any omissions here are unintentional, never deliberate. We hope that this list functions as a snapshot-in-time of resources that can be generative for future discussions in/around food scholarship. 

Azzarito, Laura. 2009. “The Rise of the Corporate Curriculum: Fatness, Fitness and Whiteness.” In Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing Bodies, edited by Jan Wright and Valerie Harwood, 183–98. New York: Routledge.

Deetz, Kelley Fanto. 2017. Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Ferris, Marcie Cohen. 2014. The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Garth, Hanna, ed. 2013. Food and Identity in the Caribbean. London: Bloomsbury.

Guthman, Julie. 2008. “‘If Only They Knew’: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions.” The Professional Geographer 60, no. 3: 387–97.

Harris, Jessica B. 2011. High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. New York: Bloomsbury.

Heynen, Nik. 2009. “Bending the Bars of Empire from Every Ghetto for Survival: The Black Panther Party’s Radical Antihunger Politics of Social Reproduction and Scale.” Annals of The Association of American Geographer 99, no. 2: 406–22.

Jones, Naya. 2019. “(Re)Visiting the Corner Store: Black Youth, Gentrification, and Food Sovereignty.” In Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries, edited by Guillaume D. Johnson, Kevin D. Thomas, Anthony Kwame Harrison, and Sonya A. Grier, 55–72. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

———. 2018. “‘It Tastes Like Heaven’: Critical and Embodied Food Pedagogy with Black Youth in the Anthropocene.” Policy Futures in Education: 1–19.

Kwate, Naa Oyo A. 2019. Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

McCutcheon, Priscilla. 2017. “Community Food Security ‘For Us, By Us’: The Nation of Islam and the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. New York: Routledge.

McWilliams, James E. 2005. A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America. New York: Columbia University Press.

Miller, Adrian. 2017. The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Nettles-Barcelón, Kimberly. 2015. “The Sassy Black Cook and the Return of the Magical Negress: Popular Representations of Black Women’s Food Work.” In Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop: Rethinking African American Foodways from Slavery to Obama, edited by Jennifer Jensen Wallach, 107–20. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.

Ramírez, Margaret Marietta. 2015. “The Elusive Inclusive: Black Food Geographies and Racialized Food Spaces.” Antipode 47, no. 3: 748–69.

Reese, Ashanté. 2019. Black Food Geographies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 

Richards-Greaves, Gillian. 2013. “The Intersections of ‘Guyanese Food’ and Constructions of Gender, Race, and Nationhood.” In Food and Identity in the Caribbean, edited by Hanna Garth. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. 2015. “‘Hearty and Happy and with a Lively, Yeasty Soul’: Feeling Right in Louisa May Alcott’s The Candy Country.” Women and Performance 24, no. 2–3: 153–66.

———. 2013. “A Forum on Form: Consider the Recipe.” J19: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Literature 1, no. 2: 439–45.

———. 2012. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the Nineteenth Century. New York: New York University Press.

———. 2009. “‘She Made the Table A Snare to Them’: Domesticity, Diet and Postcoloniality in the Writings of Sylvester Graham.” Gastronomica 9, no. 1: 50–60.

———. 2007. “‘Everything ‘Cept Eat Us’: The Black Body as Edible Object in Antebellum U.S. Literature.” Callaloo (Special Issue: Reading Callaloo, Eating Callaloo) 30, no. 1: 201–24.

———. 2005. “Approaches to Teaching Literary Food Studies.” Journal of Food, Culture & Society 8, no. 2: 243–58.

Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. 2018. Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies & Black Food in Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 

———. 2016. “Food and Race.” In The Routledge History of American Foodways, edited by Michael D. Wise and Jennifer Jensen Wallach. New York: Routledge.

———. 2013. How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Warnes, Andrew. 2008. Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America’s First Food. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

White, Monica M. 2018. Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Williams-Forson, Psyche. 2009. “African Americans and Food Stereotypes.” In African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture, edited by Ann Bower. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

———. 2010. “Other Women Cooked for My Husband: Negotiating Gender, Food, and Identities in an African American/Ghanaian Household.” Feminist Studies 36, no. 2: 435–61.

———. 2007. “More than Just the ‘Big Piece of Chicken’: The Power of Race, Class, and Food in American Consciousness.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik. New York: Routledge.

———. 2006. Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

———. 2000. “Suckin’ the Chicken Bone Dry: African American Women, History and Food Culture.” In Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food, edited by Sherrie Inness. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Williams-Forson, Psyche and Carole Counihan, eds. 2012. Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World. New York: Routledge.

Zafar, Rafia. 2019. Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

———. 2007. “Recipes for Respect: Black Hospitality Entrepreneurs before World War I.” African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture: 139–52.———. 1999. “The Signifying Dish: Autobiography and History in Two Black Women’s Cookbooks.” Feminist Studies 25, no. 2: 449–69.