Where is the Planetary?

How could collaboration maintain a habitable planet? What concepts of the world underlie political and social approaches to a transforming Earth system? How can a variety of worldviews be transformed into shared planetary-scale practices that could address the current challenges?

A gathering hosted by Haus der Kulturen der Welt in collaboration with the artist Koki Tanaka, Where is the Planetary? is a collective search for models of living together on Earth. Following five central questions, researchers, artists, and activists seek ways to transform the multitude of perspectives and cosmologies into a common agency.

This week I am excited to participate in Episode 1, which asks: What are the conditions for habitability?

Where is the Planetary? is a three-day event, running from 14 to 16 October. Find out more and browse the event schedule here.

Throughlines: Anthropocene Curriculum

Which legacies—material, geological, biological, and social—have come to form the Anthropocene? What will the legacy of the Anthropocene be? What lines or connections can be traced through the entangled web of agencies and interactions that characterize the Anthropocene?

In answer to these questions, I had the pleasure of curating a course for the Anthropocene Curriculum. Part of Course 6, titled “Thoroughlines,” my pathway explores domestic practices of care—cooking and cleaning—as a throughline to a better future.

It was a delight to contribute to this project and to pen a key contribution. My essay ”Moths, Flames, and Other Attractions” takes a moth-eaten dress as a starting point for a meditation on eating and care. Weaving together critical food studies, personal anecdote, nonhuman perspectives, and story-telling, it thinks about how modes of consumption connect us with other beings and the planet, as well as to the past and the future.

KWI Essen International Fellowship

I am thrilled to be joining KWI Essen as an international fellow in October 2022. The Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen, Germany, is an interdisciplinary research centre. The reflection of cultural studies is at the center of its work: What can it mean today to do cultural studies between disciplinarily and interdisciplinarily organized knowledge formations? What expectations and requirements regarding relevance and sense-making are they confronted with? How are their forms of criticism and comment defined; their routines of reading and writing, showing, telling and arguing?

It is a treat to be in such inspiring and accomplished company. Read more about the fifth cohort of KWI international fellows here.

A Cuisine of its Own: Food History Seminar at IHR London

Launched at the Institute of Historical Research in summer 2017, the Food History Seminar provides an inclusive setting in which food historians, academics, and experts working in related fields can come together to discuss their research.

The 2022 Autumn Term begins next week and I am delighted to be giving the first talk, titled “A Cuisine of its Own: Culinary Colonialism in Canada.”

What is Canadian cuisine and how does it differ from Indigenous fare? Early settlers in the lands now known as Canada were initially dependent on Indigenous foodways, only then to replace them with European flora and fauna, the likes of wheat, cows, and pigs. But later, when the country chiselled out an identity of its own—one distinct from Britain—, Canadian visual imagery drew from and reimagined Indigenous motifs. Then, on the occasion of Canada’s centennial, as celebrated by Montreal’s Expo 67, La Toundra—the host country’s official restaurant—claimed Indigenous ingredients as Canadian. Providing an overview of this entangled history, this talk will draw from my book project Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada.

Please join me on Zoom Thursday 6 October at 5:30 pm (BST). More details are available here. The talk is free for all to attend, but advanced booking is required.

"Sad Ol Mush": Childhood in the Past

How does breakfast connect to larger conflicts over land and power? And what role does children’s culture play in this?

After having organized the conference Food and/in Children’s Culture: National, International and Transnational Perspectives, literary scholars Anna Gasperini and Laura Tossi have kept the conversation going by curating a special issue of Childhood in the Past. It is a pleasure to have been a part of this project and to have contributed the article “‘Sad Ol Mush’: The Poetics and Politics of Porridge in Residential Schools in Canada.”

My article has just been published. Browse and read the rest of the special issue “Childhood and Food: Literary-Historical Perspectives (c. 19-20th centuries) here.

The Politics of Food

Based in London, Delfina Foundation introduced its thematic programme The Politics of Food in 2014. Since then it has hosted four seasons, which have focused on themes such as sex, diet, and disaster; adapting; and markets and movement.

Autumn 2022 marks the programme’s fifth season and it turns its attention to the climate emergency. I most excited to be participating as one of its residents. During my month in London, I will be exploring culinary substitutions, their practices, discourses, and politics. Read more about my upcoming residency and the excellent company I look forward to collaborating with.

Labrador Current Foodways Residency

It is an absolute honour to share that I have been awarded a Labrador Current Foodways Residency at Fogo Island Arts. Rooted in Fogo Island’s unique geography, the residency explores the interconnectedness of food with our histories, ecologies, economies, politics and social worlds. I cannot wait to follow the cod to Fogo, Newfoundland, in 2023!

Read the announcement to learn more about the residency and the inspiring practitioners that I am lucky to be in the company of: Marta Arzak, Cooking Sections, Taus Makhacheva, and Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa.

Food Movements, Moving Food, and Unbordering

How can we better understand food practices by viewing them through the lens of movement? Entitled Food Movements / Moving Food , Umbra’s 2022 Biennial Conference on Food, Sustainability, and Environment addresses what happens when people and food products move through regional, national, and international networks.

What are the effects of these movements on local, regional, national, and international communities and cultures? What additional actions and reactions do they precipitate?

The conference aims to respond to such questions in Perugia, Italy, June 9 to 12. I am delighted to be chairing the “Migration” panel. I will also present the paper “Unbordering a Movement: Indigenous Chefs and State Lines.” What happens when political boundaries influence the movement of ingredients? And what happens when these borders police whom may travel and with what? What are the culinary and political consequences? Focusing on the lands now called Canada and the United States, my paper traces the ways state, provincial, and national borders influence the contemporary Indigenous Food Movement. I also map how Indigenous chefs, restaurateurs, and caterers resist these borders.

Today's Special: Reading Menus as Cultural Texts

What is food? A thing we eat, a creator of cultures, an all-encompassing system? An object, a process, a way of understanding ourselves? A way to altogether reimagine study and practice in the first place?

Food Studies: Matter, Meaning, Movement is a new open-access textbook. Speaking to early undergraduate learners, it brings together 60 chapters that cover themes ranging from cultural identity to the financialization of food, breastfeeding to the foodways of rural Kyrgyzstan, eating disorders to backyard chicken farming.

I had the pleasure of contributing a chapter that draws from my experience teaching food studies at LMU Munich. Each of my classes assigns a menu analysis. But how can you look beyond your own appetite in order to read menus as cultural texts? “Today’s Special” answers this question. And this video offers a preview of my chapter.

Food Studies: Matter, Meaning, Movement is available for free online, both as a PDF and as an e-publication.

"The Bitter Taste of Extinction"

How is food writing a means for environmental activism? In answer to this question, I’m pleased to be presenting a paper at the American Society for Environmental History’s 2022 Conference.

Titled “‘The Bitter Taste of Extinction’: Writing the Environmental Crisis Through Food,” my paper considers how American food writing represents, activates, or seeks to preserve the environment by surveying the genre’s growing environmental consciousness.

The conference takes place in Eugene, Oregon, March 23 to 27. Learn more about it here.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Eaten Magazine - an independent magazine celebrating the history of food - has dedicated its latest issue to the most important meal of the day.

Breakfast, as Issue 13 reveals, is full of a veritable buffet of stories to help you start your day, from the evolution of a perfect hangover cure to the invention of the All-American breakfast to the udder-chaos of a milk promotional campaign gone wrong.

I had too much fun writing about how last night’s booze haunts this morning’s breakfast, which is to say the history of the Bloody Mary and other hangover cures. Browse the issue here.

Eating the Future

The future is typically not my business. This is not to say it isn’t of interest but, as a historian, it is not part of my job profile to imagine it. This is why the work of Katinka Versendaal—a food designer and “gastronomic futurologist”—makes me curious. What Katinka proposes with her food design studio—the Eatelier—moves beyond forecasting culinary trends. This is not about looking at the past and using it as a crystal ball to predict future outcomes. Instead, Katinka applies speculative design thinking to gastronomy to ask: is this the future we want?

It was a pleasure to interview Katinka for The Preserve Journal. Preview issue 6 here.

A Seat at the Table

From McDonald’s in Moscow to Starbucks in Shanghai, American food is simply everywhere. But why and how? And beyond being fast, what exactly is American food?

As part of the Atlantische Akademie’s Let’s Talk America series, I am excited to give a talk on Wednesday January 26, titled “A Seat at the Table: Food in America and American Food in the World.” Find out more about the event and register here.

Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment at KWI Essen

How do human appetites shape plants and animals, land and water, the world’s present and its future?

Next Wednesday January 19, I’m delighted to be giving a talk in answer to this question at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen. “Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment” will present my current research about culinary reactions to climate change. It will reflect on how humans know, endanger, and—perhaps—even conserve flora, fauna, and their habitats through culinary practices.

Find out more about the talk and the link to register here.

America and its Road Movies

Just in time for the holidays, the Review of International American Studies has published its latest issue, titled “Car Culture(s): Machines, Roads, Mythologies.”

It is a delight to have contributed to it with the article “Buddies, Lovers, and Detours: America and its Road Movies.” It asks: Is an open road also a democratic one? The article zooms in on the films Queen & Slim and Unpregnant to discuss the American road movie genre from the perspective of 2021 and how contemporary film narratives intersect with race and gender.

Many thanks to the students in my 2019-2020 course “Head Out on the Highway: The Cultural History of the American Road Movie” at LMU Munich’s Amerika-Institut. This one’s for you. Thanks for expanding my own views of the genre and for such lively (and fun) discussions.

On Ice: Life and Lunch at Mercato di Rialto

According to a new journal just released by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, Venice - and its lagoon - is a privileged location for sensing and interrogating the effects of human activity and climate change regarding the biological, cultural, and social dynamics of local ecosystems. And its title - Lagoonscapes: The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities - reflects exactly this position.

In its inaugural issue I ask: How does shopping at Venice’s famous market - Mercato di Rialto - help Venetians and visitors alike feel connected to the lagoon? And to the foods they eat?

Visitors consume Venice’s Mercato di Rialto most often with their eyes and cameras. Venetians, in contrast, consume it with their mouths. During the week they voice their orders gently, but on Saturday mornings shopping lists become full-volume announcements that compete against the market noise. By analysing the history and role of the Pescheria at Rialto Market and its culinary and cultural representations, this article considers the entanglement between seafood and people, ice and freshness, and life and lunch. Read “On Ice” here.

Judith Beck's Burgenland

Shining a spotlight on natural wine, Pipette is an independent, print-only magazine. Founded by natural wine journalist Rachel Signer, it shares the stories of small natural wine producers and their communities.

Issue 10 will be the final edition of Pipette and so it is even more of a thrill to have contributed to its grand finale and to be in such excellent company.

I travelled to Burgenland to interview Judith Beck about her prolific range of wines, the process of converting her vineyards to biodynamics, and how she found her own “style” as a winemaker.

The issue is available to preview and order here.

Venice is Leaking

The Anthropocene Campus Venice is a one-week forum around the theme of Water Politics in the Age of the Anthropocene, organized by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the Center for the Humanities and Social Change, and the Max Planck Partner Group The Water City.

It is set in the framework of the Anthropocene Curriculum, a collaborative project initiated by Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, both in Berlin.

It takes place in Venice October 11 to 16 and it has been inspiring and expanding to organize one of the four seminars together with my dear colleagues Heather Contant and Ifor Duncan. Read more about “Venice is Leaking: Interventions in the Lagoon-City Continuum” here and about the ACV public events program here.

A Return to the Rachel Carson Center

It is a joy to return to my alma mater, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, as its new editorial director.

Read more about the RCC and its many activities here.

Citrus and Seasonal Nostalgia

Based in New York, Salt & Pepper is a literary magazine about food, with recipes. It publishes both fiction and nonfiction and recipes accompany all of its stories. Quite literally providing food for thought, it aims to shed the one-time-read nature of literary magazines by including recipes that can become staples in your kitchen.

A magazine that leaves the bookshelf or coffee table and takes residence next to your stove.

Its latest issue explores nostalgia and its many flavours. It is a great pleasure to have my musings included and to write about citrus, Venice, and (confused) seasonal nostalgia. With recipes of course. One sweet (Blood Oranges and Honey Pistachios) and one savoury (Kumquat Salsa Verde).

Preview the issue here.