The Graduate Journal of Food Studies (GJFS) is a platform for open scholarship. As the Scholarly Communications Coordinator for the Graduate Association for Food Studies (GAFS), James Edward Malin provides background to how open scholarship came to be, why it is a political act, and explains the steps early-career scholars can take towards a more open food studies scholarship.

Cannibalism distinguishes the civilized from the uncivilized, the moral from the depraved, and the holy from the wicked – or so the dominant Western narrative would have you think. Rachel B. Hermann’s edited collection, To Feast on Us as Their Prey: Cannibalism and the Early Modern Atlantic, contributes to the interdisciplinary historical study of cannibalism by reconsidering the traditional contexts in which the taboo practice is often explored.

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.

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.