Taking Food Public

The field of food studies has been growing rapidly over the last thirty years and has exploded since the turn of the millennium. Scholars from an array of disciplines have trained fresh theoretical and methodological approaches onto new dimensions of the human relationship to food. This anthology capitalizes on this particular cultural moment to bring to the fore recent scholarship that focuses on innovative ways people are recasting food in public spaces to challenge hegemonic practices and meanings. Organized into five interrelated sections on food production – consumption, performance, Diasporas, and activism – articles aim to provide new perspectives on the changing meanings and uses of food in the twenty-first century.

"If there was ever any question about food being a legitimate subject of scholarly study, Taking Food Public is the answer. These essays demonstrate beyond doubt that studying food can teach students about the most important issues facing today’s societies, not only those related to agricultural production and consumption, but also broader matters such as governance, power, immigration, gender, international relations, and, above all, democracy and social justice. This book should be an easy choice for any number of exciting courses."—Marion Nestle, Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University"Taking Food Public is a simply brilliant collection of carefully selected, highly accessible writings that demonstrates how a good anthology is so much more than the sum of its parts. This is a vital portal into the world of food and will be an essential addition to reading lists on food-related courses across the humanities and social sciences."—Colin Sage, Geography, University College Cork, Ireland "Carol Counihan and Psyche Williams-Forson organize some of the best work of the discipline of food studies into accessible teaching units that represent diverse transects of our food and nutrition systems: from production to consumption; from private and cultural identity "at home" to the implications of Diaspora; from food insecurity, junk food, and food deserts to activists demanding the democratization of economic and social policy. Taking Food Public reveals how both an academic movement and broader social movements are 'consciously shaping food in the public sphere.'"—Anne Bellows, Gender and Food/Nutrition, Universität Hohenheim, Germany

Psyche Wililams-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 authored the award-winning book (American Folklore Society), Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (2006). Her new research explores the role of the value market as a immediate site of food acquisition and a project on class, consumption, and citizenship among African Americans by examining domestic interiors from the late nineteenth-century to the early twentieth-century. Carole Counihan is Professor of Anthropology at Millersville University and editor-in-chief of Food and Foodways journal. She is author of The Anthropology of Food and Body (1999), Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence (2004), and A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado (2009). She is editor of Food in the USA (2002) and, with Penny Van Esterik, of Food and Culture (1997, 2008). She has been a visiting professor at Boston University, the University of Cagliari, the University of Gastronomic Sciences (Italy), and the University of Malta. Her new research focuses on food activism in Italy.