Julia Abramson teaches French and food studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of the books Learning from Lying: Paradoxes of the Literary Mystification (2005) and Food Culture in France (2007), and she has published articles on topics including print representations of meat carving in Europe, the aesthetics and ethics of vegetable sculpture in contemporary society, vegetarianism in France, and the politics of French Empire gastronomic writing and the work of Grimod de la Reynière. Abramson is currently writing a new book, while also realizing, in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, the Oklahoma Humanities Council, and organizations throughout the state of Oklahoma, a project to engage public debate about food history and contemporary food culture.
Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where he teaches courses on the Renaissance and Reformation, Food History and the History of Medicine. He is the author of many books on food history including Eating Right in the Renaissance (University of California Press, 2002), Food in Early Modern Europe (Greenwood Press, 2003), Cooking in Europe 1250–1650 (Greenwood Press, 2005), The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (University of Illinois Press, 2007), Beans: A History (Berg, 2007, winner of the 2008 International Association of Culinary Professionals Jane Grigson Award), and Pancake (Reaktion Press, 2008). He has coauthored two cookbooks: The Lost Art of Real Cooking (Penguin/Perigee, 2010) and The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home (2012). He has also edited the four-volume Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2010) and co-edits the journal Food, Culture and Society.
Alison Hope Alkon is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of the Pacific. She is co-editor of Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability (MIT Press, 2011). Her first monograph, Black White and Green: Farmers Markets Race and the Green Economy is due out from UGA Press in 2013.
Anne C. Bellows is University Professor, Chair in Gender and Nutrition, Institute for Social Sciences in Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Germany. She is a geographer and focuses on issues of: Food and nutrition security, human rights – especially the right to adequate food and nutrition, food sovereignty and systems, urban agriculture; taking an approach characterized by a gender and justice perspective and carried out in the context of local and global relationships and analysis.
Rachel Black is Assistant Professor of Gastronomy and coordinator of the Gastronomy Program at Boston University. Black is the author of Porta Palazzo: The Ethnography of an Italian market (2012) and editor of Alcohol in Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010). Black’s current research focuses on wine, culture, and economics.
Anne Bower recently retired from teaching English at Ohio State University-Marion. She is the author of African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2007; paperback edition 2009); Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (Routledge, 2004); and Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), and has also published food and culture articles in Gastronomica and the Journal of Popular Culture. She now lives in rural Vermont, teaching tai chi, gardening, and cooking, writing fiction and creative nonfiction, but retaining an interest in food studies.
Anthony F. Buccini holds a PhD in Germanic Linguistics from Cornell University and is an Associate in the Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago. He has published on a variety of topics in historical linguistics, language contact, and dialectology, especially on Dutch and other Germanic languages, and on Romance languages. His most recent linguistic article is “Between pre-German and pre-English: the origin of Dutch,” Journal of Germanic Linguistics (Special issue on Dutch between English and German), 2010. In the field of food history he has been a regular contributor to the annual Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery since 2005, when he was awarded the Sophie Coe Prize in Food History for “Western Mediterranean Vegetable Stews and the Integration of Culinary Exotica” (published 2006 in Authenticity in the Kitchen. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005). His work in food studies employs linguistic methodologies and models as part of his approach to topics in Mediterranean culinary history; see, for example, his 2010 paper “The Anatolian Origins of the Words ‘Olive’ and ‘Oil’ and the Early History of Oleïculture” in Food and Language. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2009. He is currently preparing a monograph on the history of olive oil.
Kima Cargill is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Her work sits at the intersection of psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology and focuses on food and culture. Her research has been published in The Psychoanalytic Review, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, and Food, Culture, and Society, among other publications. Dr Cargill teaches graduate and undergraduate courses focusing on psychoanalysis and culture. Her courses include Freud and His Critics, Mental Illness Across Cultures, and the Psychology of Food and Culture. She has taught in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
Janet Chrzan holds a PhD in physical/nutritional anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the connections between social activities, nutritional intakes, and mother and child health outcomes in pregnant teens. She teaches a variety of courses in the Anthropology Department and School of Nursing including food and culture, nutritional anthropology, world hunger, and topics in medical anthropology.
Jonathan Deutsch, PhD, is Associate Professor of Culinary Arts at Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York, and of Public Health at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Robert Dirks is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University. He has conducted research in areas of both food and nutrition. His publications include papers in American Anthropologist, Annual Review of Nutrition, Current Anthropology, Journal of Nutrition, and World Cultures. His most recent publication is Come & Get It! McDonaldization and the Disappearance of Local Food from a Central Illinois Community.
Margot Finn has a PhD in American culture and teaches courses on food studies, mass media, and the liberal arts at the University of Michigan. Her writing has been published in the journal Folklore Forum and several anthologies, and she is currently working on a book based on her dissertation, Aspirational Eating: Class Anxiety and the Rise of Food in Popular Culture.
Joan Fitzpatrick is the author of Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays (Ashgate, 2007) and a dictionary entitled Shakespeare and the Language of Food (Continuum, 2010). She has also edited a collection of essays entitled Renaissance Food from Rabelais to Shakespeare: Culinary Readings and Culinary Histories (Ashgate, 2010) and is currently preparing an edition of three early modern dietaries for the Revels Companion Library Series (Manchester University Press).
Beth M. Forrest is Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts in the bachelors program at the Culinary Institute of America. Her work has appeared in Food and Foodways, Gastronomica, and Food and Culture and Society, among other publications.
David Grumett is Research Associate in the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, UK. He is (with Rachel Muers) author of Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet (Routledge, 2010) and editor of Eating and Believing: Interdisciplinary Essays on Theology and Vegetarianism (T&T Clark, 2008). He has also produced several articles, chapters, and contributions to reference works on topics in food and theology.
Lisa Heldke is Professor of Philosophy and Sponberg Chair in Ethics at Gustavus Adolphus College. The author of Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (Routledge), she is also the editor or co-editor of several books, including Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food (Indiana). She co-edits Food, Culture and Society with Ken Albala, and is on the editorial team for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Ethics (Springer). She is currently at work with fellow philosopher Ray Boisvert, on a manuscript entitled Philosophers at Table.
Carol Helstosky is an associate professor of history at the University of Denver, where she has taught European history since 1997. She is the author of Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy (2004), Pizza: A Global History (2008), and Food Culture of the Mediterranean (2009), as well as many articles on the subject of food history and Italian cultural history. She is currently writing a book on the relationship between art forgery and the development of the art market in modern Italy. She is also the editor for the forthcoming Routledge History of Food.
Amanda Hesser, a co-founder of food52.com, was named one of the 50 most influential women in food by Gourmet. As a longtime staffer at The New York Times, Hesser wrote more than 750 stories and was the food editor at the Times Magazine. She has written the award-winning books Cooking for Mr. Latte and The Cook and the Gardener, and edited the essay collection, Eat, Memory. Her last book, a New York Times bestseller and the winner of a James Beard award, is The Essential New York Times Cookbook. Hesser is a trustee of Awesome Food.
Gina Hunter, a cultural anthropologist, is an associate professor of anthropology at Illinois State University. Her geographic specialization is Brazil and areas of scholarly interest are women’s reproductive health; anthropology of the body, gender, and health; food systems; and pedagogy. Her research articles have appeared in Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, Women’s Healthcare International, and Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.
Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a longtime national and international leader in sustainable agriculture, shares an appointment as Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and as President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. He also continues to manage his family’s 2,600-acre certified organic farm in south central North Dakota. He is a professor in the ISU Department of Religion and Philosophy and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago.
Emily Broad Leib is a lawyer and senior clinical fellow in the Harvard Law School Health Law and Policy Clinic. Emily works with nonprofit organizations and government agencies to recommend food laws and policies aimed at increasing access to healthy foods and assisting small farmers and producers in participating in food markets. She supervises Harvard Law students engaged in these projects and co-teaches a course entitled “Food: A Health Law and Policy Seminar.”
Stefanie Lemke is a senior researcher at the Department Gender and Nutrition, Institute for Social Sciences in Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Germany. For her Masters she studied nutrition sciences and home economics, taught in a holistic and integrative manner. During her PhD studies, situated within rural sociology, anthropology, and nutrition sciences, and successive research projects, she experienced the challenges and advantages of working in multidisciplinary settings. Besides her academic engagement she was a nutrition consultant for various private and public institutions. The focus of her current work includes food and nutrition security; sustainable livelihoods; local food systems; gender; the right to adequate food; qualitative, mixed methods; and rights-based approaches.
Vivian Liberman, MLA, is Training Manager at Sofitel Cartagena Santa Clara in Colombia.
Baylen J. Linnekin is a lawyer and food writer and is the founding executive director of the Washington, DC-based grassroots nonprofit Keep Food Legal. He has presented his research on street food, agricultural law, food safety, food advocacy, social media, teaching food law, food rights and the US Constitution, and other topics at academic conferences around the country.
Arthur Lizie is Associate Professor of Media Studies and Communication Technologies and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University. He has also taught at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. His first book, Dreaming the World: U2 Fans, Online Community, and Intercultural Communication, was released in 2009. He is currently conducting research on the food film genre and writing a global history of smoked food.
Lucy M. Long is the author of Culinary Tourism (2004), Regional American Food Culture (2009), and numerous articles on foodways. She has a PhD in folklore, an MA in ethnomusicology and taught folklore, American studies, popular culture, international studies, and tourism at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. She also founded and directs the non-profit Center for Food and Culture, based in Ohio, which serves as an international networking clearinghouse on all aspects of food in order to promote a deeper understanding of the ways in which food connects us all.
William Alex McIntosh is a professor in the Department of Sociology and on the Interdisciplinary Faculty of Nutrition. He teaches courses on the sociology of food and nutrition and research methods at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Recent papers include “Writing the Food Studies Movement: A Commentary” in the journal Food, Culture, and Society, “Determinants of Time Children Spend Eating at Fast Food and Sit-Down Restaurants – Further Explorations” in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior and “Mothers and Meals: The Effects of Mothers’ Meal Planning and Shopping Motivations on Children’s Participation in Family Meals” in the journal Appetite.
Alice McLean is the author of Aesthetic Pleasure in Twentieth-Century Women’s Food Writing: The Innovative Appetites of M.F.K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas, and Elizabeth David and Cooking in America, 1840–1945. A specialist in the literature of food and women’s studies, she earned her PhD in English from the University of California, Davis and received an Honors Teaching Fellowship from Sweet Briar College (2004–9).
Katherine M. Moore is an archaeologist in the American Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 1989, and studies the origins of pastoralists and specialized hunters using animal bones from archaeological sites and stable isotopes. She has done fieldwork on the prehistoric cultural ecology of food production in North America, South America, and Central Asia.
Deirdre Murphy is Associate Professor of Liberal Arts in the bachelors program of the Culinary Institute of America. She earned her PhD from the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Sarah Murray is a doctoral student in media and cultural studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research broadly encompasses taste cultures, niche media identities, feminist television studies, the relationship between television and new media, and food and media. She has most recently published on gender and reality television and has additional forthcoming work on modern food television.
Travis Nygard is Assistant Professor of Art History at Ripon College in Wisconsin. He received his PhD from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, where his dissertation research focused on the visual culture of American agribusiness during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has published articles on the visual culture of agribusiness, murals made from corn, and ancient Mayan art. He is currently studying the social history of wheat in America, along with the gastronomist Kelly O’Leary.
Fabio Parasecoli is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Food Studies at the New School in New York City. His research focuses on the intersections among food, media, and politics. He is program advisor at Gustolab, a center for food and culture in Rome, and collaborates with other institutions such as the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona (Spain), the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy), and ALMA Graduate School at the University of Bologna. Among his recent publications are Food Culture in Italy (2004), the introduction to Culinary Cultures in Europe (the Council of Europe, 2005) and Bite me! Food in Popular Culture (2008). He is general editor with Peter Scholliers of the six-volume Cultural History of Food (2012).
Thomas Piontek is Assistant Professor of English and Gender Studies at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. He is the author of Queering Gay and Lesbian Studies (Illinois University Press, 2006) as well as articles, book chapters, reviews, and reference materials on film, popular culture, history, literature, and pedagogy.
Janet Poppendieck is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press, 2010), Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement (Penguin, 1999), and Breadlines Knee Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression (Rutgers University Press, 1985).
Helen Rosner is an editor, writer, and occasional photographer. Currently the senior web editor at Saveur, she has formerly been an editor of New York Magazine’s restaurant blog Grub Street, a founding editor of the website EatMeDaily.com, and a cookbook editor.
Arlene Spark is Professor and Program Director of Public Health Nutrition at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. She worked in pediatric preventive cardiology at the American Health Foundation and for more than 25 years has taught nutrition at the university level, including 12 years at New York Medical College. Since 1998, Dr Spark has been an associate professor at Hunter College and coordinator of the college’s nutrition programs. She is also acting co-director of the Program in Urban Public Health. In 2007, CRC Press published her book – Nutrition in Public Health: Principles, Policies, and Practice.
Deborah Valenze is Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches courses on the history of food and early modern European history. She is the author of Milk: A Local and Global History (Yale University Press, 2011), and several books and articles on British social and cultural history. She is currently working on a project on food and the natural world in eighteenth-century Britain.
Jessica Walker is a first year PhD student in American studies. She received her BA from Bowdoin College in anthropology and gender and women’s studies in 2009. Jessica’s research interests focus on exploring the relationship between black women and their preparation, cooking, and consumption of “soul food.” Other interests include material culture, black feminist anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and feminist theory.
Elizabeth Williams is a founder and President of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, having always been fascinated by the way the lure of nutmeg and peppercorns motivated the exploration of the world. She is also a member of the adjunct faculty in the Food Studies Program at New York University. Much of her research and writing centers on the legal and policy issues related to food and foodways. Her book, The A–Z Encyclopedia of Food Controversies and the Law was published by Greenwood Publishing in January, 2011. She was for six years President and CEO of the University of New Orleans Foundation. Prior to the UNO Foundation, Williams was Director of the Arts Administration Program at the University of New Orleans. A graduate of Louisiana State University and Louisiana State University Law Center, she has served in the US Army as a Judge Advocate General (JAG). She has practiced law in Washington, DC and Louisiana. She is a member of the Folklife Commission, State of Louisiana.
Psyche Williams-Forson is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park and an affiliate faculty member of the women’s studies and African American studies departments and the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity. She is co-editor of Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World and Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (2006). Her new research explores the role of the value store as an immediate site of food acquisition and the role of African-American women in underground economies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.