Conversations With Food

"Conversations With Food" is an edited volume like no other. . . . [T]hese thirteen chapters comprise a choose-your-own-adventure for food studies, as the editors invite readers to mix and match chapters to tease out unexpected, synergistic connections. Authors, too, link their own chapters to others in the volume, providing multiple routes through the text. Such an arrangement illuminates the bonds between seemingly disparate phenomena. Readers can discover the relationships between hotdogs in Houston and the globalization of French cuisine, the role of race in Ancel Keys’s starvation experiments and U.S. permaculture, or how notions of impurity guide both the theorization of fermentation and early twentieth-century food manufacturing practices. . . . [T]his volume showcases food studies at its best, its most inclusive, and its most exciting: as a truly interdisciplinary home for conversations with and about food.

Emily J.H. Contois, University of Tulsa

Author of "Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture"

"Like a test kitchen for food studies scholarship, "Conversations With Food" invites readers to sample its eclectic offerings, to explore novel fusions of diverse scholarly perspectives, to mix and remix and become pleasantly overwhelmed by the seemingly endless variations on ‘food and . . . ’. This collection of essays from historians, epidemiologists, literary scholars, nutritionists, anthropologists, and others explores food and nutrition from microbial interactions to international politics, tackling contexts as diverse as ballpark franks, posthuman dietetics, culinary tourism, and voluntary starvation (for science). Readers new to food studies are sure to find morsels that whet their appetites, and scholars in the field will have plenty to sink their teeth into as well."

Andrew R. Ruis, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Author of "Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat: The Origins of School Lunch in the United States"

Sweeping in scope and diverse in approaches, the essays in this transhistorical, global, transdisciplinary collection vividly articulate the many, complex, and fascinating dimensions of food. Imaginative curation of essays renders "Conversations With Food" a standout among many recent food studies anthologies. . . . It is almost as if the reader is listening to lively exchanges among these scholars – about laboratories and ballparks, microbes and monoculture, heritage cuisine and single-serve packaging, or diplomatic feasts and food stamps – through which they discover unexpected relationships and resonances between seemingly disparate subjects.

Ann Folino White, Michigan State University

Author of "Plowed Under: Food Policy Protests and Performance in New Deal America";

Co-editor of "Food and Theatre on the World Stage"