414 episodes

Interviews with Food Writers about their New Books
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New Books in Food Marshall Poe

    • Arts
    • 4.8 • 9 Ratings

Interviews with Food Writers about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

    David E. Sutton, "Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples" (Berghahn, 2021)

    David E. Sutton, "Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples" (Berghahn, 2021)

    What defines cooking as cooking, and why does cooking matter to the understanding of society, cultural change and everyday life? Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples (Berghahn, 2021) by Dr. David E. Sutton explores these questions by proposing a new theory of the meaning of cooking as a willingness to put oneself and one’s meals at risk on a daily basis. Richly illustrated with examples from the author’s anthropology fieldwork in Greece, Bigger Fish to Fry proposes a new approach to the meaning of cooking and how the study of cooking can reshape our understanding of social processes more generally.
    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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    • 58 min
    Dinesh Wadiwel, "Animals and Capital" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

    Dinesh Wadiwel, "Animals and Capital" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

    In the 20th century, capitalist animal agriculture emerged with a twofold mission: to ruthlessly exploit animals for their labour time and enlarge human food supplies. The results of this process are clear. Animal-sourced foods have expanded exponentially. And simultaneously, hundreds of billions of animals confront humans and machines in brutal, antagonistic relations shaped by domination and resistance.
    Building on Karl Marx’s value theory, Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel argues that factory farms and industrial fisheries are not merely an example of unchecked human supremacism. Nor a result of the victory of market forces. But a combination of both. In Animals and Capital (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) Wadiwel untangles this contemporary handshake between hierarchical anthropocentrism and capitalism.
    Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel is Associate Professor in Socio-Legal Studies and Human Rights at the University of Sydney. His research interests include theories of violence, critical animal studies and disability rights. He is author of The War against Animals (Brill, 2015) and is co-editor, with Matthew Chrulew of Foucault and Animals (Brill, 2016). He has a background working within civil society organisations, including in anti-poverty and disability rights roles.
    Kyle Johannsen is a Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).
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    • 1 hr 33 min
    Xaq Frohlich on the History of Food Labeling

    Xaq Frohlich on the History of Food Labeling

    Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Xaq Frolich, Associate Professor of History at Auburn University, about his new book, From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (University of California Press, 2023). From Label to Table tells the fascinating history of the US Food and Drug Administration’s spreading authority of food regulation over the 20th century, which, after many twists and turns, culminated in the mandatory standardized food label featured on all packaged foods sold in the United States. The pair also talk about more recent controversies, such as labeling around genetically modified organisms, organic farming, and trans fats. Finally, they discuss Frolich’s plans for future work, including fascinating potential projects on the history of the Mediterranean Diet and the history of food packaging.
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    • 1 hr 30 min
    Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm

    Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm

    Today’s book is: Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, 2023), by David Mas Masumoto. In his new memoir, Mas discovers his “lost” aunt. She had been taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. Due to a disability, she became a “ward” of the state; and his family believed she had died. Then came a surprising phone call—she was alive and living a few miles from their family farm. As Mas discovers, every family has secrets, silences, and lives among their unanswered questions. As Mas learns about his aunt, he asks, How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? The book interrogates how both shame and resilience empowered his family to forge forward in a land that did not want them. Mas shares how he is driven to explore his identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. In doing so, he uncovers family secrets that bind his family to a sense of history buried in the earth they work and a sense of place that defines them. Secret Harvests is a story of a family separated by racism against Japanese Americans and the discrimination of people with developmental disabilities—reunited seventy years later, returning to their roots on a farm, and bound by family secrets.
    Our guest is: David Mas Masumoto is an organic farmer, author, and activist. His book Epitaph for a Peach won the Julia Child Cookbook award and was a finalist for a James Beard award. His writing has been awarded a Commonwealth Club of California silver medal and the Independent Publisher Books bronze medal. He has been honored by Rodale Institute as an "Organic Pioneer." He has served on the boards of the James Irvine Foundation, Public Policy Institute of California, Cal Humanities, and the National Council on the Arts with nomination by President Obama. He farms with his wife Marcy and two adult children, Nikiko and Koro. They reside in a hundred-year-old farmhouse surrounded by their eighty-acre organic peach, nectarine, apricot, and raisin farm outside of Fresno, California.
    Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.
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    Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. You can support the show by downloading episodes and by telling a friend about them, because knowledge should be shared.
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    • 1 hr 4 min
    Christy Spackman, "The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage" (U California Press, 2023)

    Christy Spackman, "The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage" (U California Press, 2023)

    Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage (U California Press, 2023) explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examining the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tastes and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible—but substantial—sensory labor involved in creating tap water.
    Christy Spackman is Assistant Professor of Art/Science at Arizona State University, where she holds a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. She is also Director of the Sensory Labor(atory), an experimental research collective dedicated to creatively disrupting longstanding sensory hierarchies. Her academic work focuses on how the sensory experiences of making, consuming, and disposing of food influence and are influenced by “technologies of taste,” her term for the oft-overlooked technologies and practices used to manage the sensory aspects of foods during production.
    Garrett Broad is Associate Professor of Communication Studies in Rowan University’s Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts, where he also serves as Provost’s Fellow in the Catalysts for Sustainability Initiative. His research and teaching explores the connections between contemporary social movements, food systems, and digital media technology. He is the author of More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change, as well as a variety of articles on food's relationship to environmental sustainability, economic equity, and the health of humans and nonhuman animals.
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    • 56 min
    Alicia Kennedy, "No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating" (Beacon Press, 2023)

    Alicia Kennedy, "No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating" (Beacon Press, 2023)

    A culinary and cultural history of plant-based eating in the United States that delves into the subcultures and politics that have defined alternative food. 
    The vegan diet used to be associated only with eccentric hippies and tofu-loving activists who shop at co-ops and live on compounds. We’ve come a long way since then. Now, fine-dining restaurants like Eleven Madison Park cater to chic upscale clientele with a plant-based menu, and Impossible Whoppers are available at Burger King. But can plant-based food keep its historical anti-capitalist energies if it goes mainstream? And does it need to? 
    In No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating (Beacon Press, 2023), author Alicia Kennedy chronicles the fascinating history of plant-based eating in the United States, from the early experiments in tempeh production undertaken by the Farm commune in the 70s to the vegan punk cafes and anarchist zines of the 90s to the chefs and food writers seeking to decolonize vegetarian food today. Many people become vegans because they are concerned about the role capitalist food systems play in climate change, inequality, white supremacy, and environmental and cultural degradation. But a world where Walmart sells frozen vegan pizzas and non-dairy pints of ice cream are available at gas stations – raises distinct questions about the meanings and goals of plant-based eating. Kennedy—a vegetarian, former vegan, and once-proprietor of a vegan bakery—understands how to present this history with sympathy, knowledge, and humor. No Meat Required brings much-needed depth and context to our understanding of vegan and vegetarian cuisine, and makes a passionate argument for retaining its radical heart.
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    • 1 hr 1 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
9 Ratings

9 Ratings

Dr.Jeff.H ,

Perk of Knowing the Author's Perspective

I teach a university course every semester on the history of human nutrition. My students have to write a book review, which some confuse with a book report despite my efforts but that's another matter, after reading a non-fiction book about the history of nutrition, food studies, sports studies, and other related disciplines. New Books in Food is great for my students and for me. I learn about recently released books, which I add to my students' list of possibilities for the book review, and my students get to spend time with the author(s) of the book they selected. This gives them insight regarding an author's intentions for a book, which can prove helpful when they are working on their assignment.

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