In Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat, Robert N. Spengler III discusses foods with origins in inner Asia that are now commonplace on tables globally. In our current times of globalization, the book debates how global exchange of goods is not a new aspect of human culinary experiences, as global food trade has allowed plants, seeds, and traditions to travel across continents over the last five millennia.
Occupying a critical middle ground to these discussions, philosopher Erin McKenna provides a fresh, honest approach to this long-standing debate about eating animals in her reflective text, Livestock: Food, Fiber, and Friends.
The opportunity to travel was one of the many perks of Janna Tamargo’s career in internet-based marketing and advertising—by the end of 2017, she had eaten her way through thirteen countries in that year alone.
Culinary Poetics and Edible Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Stacie Cassarino is about art and its influence on everyday consumption. Cassarino argues that gastronomic avant-garde literary texts influence national consumption and that these shifts subsequently influence what’s for dinner.
In Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C., Ashanté M. Reese explores how Black communities are left behind in the urban renewal process due to racism, historical geographical segregation and disinvestment of Black neighborhoods, and how these communities navigate low food access. Often ignored by the literature on food access and food security are the coping mechanisms people in these conditions develop to acquire the foods they prefer or need or how people create meaning in the process of doing so.
Miguel Cuj uses linguistics and personal ethnographic investigation to address hunger narratives in Guatemala.
The Graduate Association for Food Studies (GAFS) stands in solidarity with the Black community and demands justice for those murdered by police—George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, David McAtee and too many others—and vehemently condemns the ongoing police brutality and white supremacy across the United States and the world.
We hope that everyone is keeping well in these uncertain times. We are very excited to announce some important […]
Vol. 6, No. 1 reflects upon our past as a journal, our conversations in the present, and our provocations for the future. This issue features essays and a keynote drawn from the Graduate Association for Food Studies’ biennial conference, as well as commentary and book reviews. Happy reading!
Psyche Williams-Forson argues for an intersectional approach. If racism and inequality have persisted across different time periods, why are we forcing food to do the heavy lifting that social inequality contributes to?
