My twentieth high school reunion is this summer, and I can’t decide if I want to go or not. Enmeshed in ambivalence, I’m weighing my more-bitter-than-sweet high school memories alongside how those years undeniably influenced me. What’s more, our society performs a collective myth-making around high school culture that’s immortalized in the films and TV… Read more →
Emily Contois
Emily Contois
Writer
A Burnout Confession: I’m a Foodie Academic Who Lost the Joy of Cooking
For most of last year, I worried that I’d broken my brain. As an academic whose job entails creating knowledge, this was utterly terrifying. I could still write, but getting words on the page was difficult and painfully slow. As I tried to rehab my writing muscles, I realized I’d missed a key warning sign…. Read more →
Wondering About Wonder Foods: An Interview with Lisa Haushofer
In Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition, Lisa Haushofer (Senior Research Associate in the History of Medicine Department at the University of Zurich) offers a vital history of our relationship with food, which is often easily distracted by the latest “superfood” or nutrition fad. She analyzes four “wonder foods” that gripped American and… Read more →
Feeding Fascism, Gender, and Food Work: An Interview with Diana Garvin
Rather than fearsome dictators, tabletop politics take center stage in Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work, a new book published in 2022 with the University of Toronto Press by Diana Garvin, Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Oregon. Feeding Fascism considers Italian women’s everyday experiences under fascism through their efforts to… Read more →
Diners, Dudes, and Diets
It took me six months to dream up the title Diners, Dudes, and Diets (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). For anyone who’s ever watched Guy Fieri’s show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, my inspiration is likely pretty clear. As I researched gender and power in contemporary American food media, I spent years analyzing Fieri’s polarizing… Read more →
Alvenia Fulton, Soul Food, and Black Liberation: An Interview with Travis Weisse
For the first annual Nursing Clio Prize for Best Journal Article, honorable mention went to Travis Weisse’s excellent and groundbreaking “‘Alone in a Sea of Rib-Tips’: Alvenia Fulton, Natural Health, and the Politics of Soul Food.” Known as the ‘Queen of Nutrition,’ Alvenia M. Fulton was a Black alternative health practitioner and health food promoter… Read more →
The Gender Politics of the “Sexy Chef” in Romance Literature
After finishing my master’s degree in Gastronomy in July 2013, I gave myself an academic reading palate cleanser.1 I devoured dozens of romance novels that summer before I began my PhD. Some were good: saucy and satisfying. Others were less good: dull and uninspired, though still relatively enjoyable, like the breadsticks at Olive Garden. One… Read more →
Butter and the History of U.S. Dietary Guides since 1894
Creamy, sometimes salty, and optimistically yellow, butter is one of my favorite foods. It’s also a scientific and cultural barometer. For the first half of the twentieth century, nutritionists enthusiastically endorsed butter as a good source of energy and part of a healthy, moderate diet. Early government-issued food guides endorsed eating enough food, as public… Read more →
Desire Work, Gender, and Sexuality in South African Ex-Gay Ministries: A Conversation with Melissa Hackman
In her new book, Desire Work: Ex-Gay and Pentecostal Masculinity in South Africa, Dr. Melissa Hackman examines the experiences of Pentecostal men in “ex-gay” ministries in post apartheid Cape Town. Published in 2018 by Duke University Press, Desire Work explores the belief systems, daily activities, and complicated processes of transformation that take place at the… Read more →
At the Crossroads of Comfort TV and Comfort Food
When I started my PhD, a kind mentor advised me to cope with graduate school’s stresses by eating chocolate and watching lots of TV. I received the same guidance when starting a tenure track position, though the recommendation escalated to watching TV in a (forgivable and deserved) prostrate position. This is survival advice for everyone,… Read more →