Food Stories: Navigating the Academy with Cultural Lessons from the Kitchen

Food Stories: Navigating the Academy with Cultural Lessons from the Kitchen is the first volume in the series Culinary Canvas: A Series on Integrating the Arts and Food into Higher Education. The purpose of the series is to explore the innovative integration of arts and food into higher education. Each volume aims to inspire a paradigm shift in academia, advocating for a more holistic, creative, and inclusive approach to learning, teaching, researching, serving, and existing in the academy.

In the present volume, Food Stories makes the case that food, and the culture surrounding food, is a closely held--and powerful--reality that shapes who we are as individuals, as members of varied communities, and invariably, informs who we are as educators and researchers. This book gives space for the authors to explore not only the impact that food and culture have had, and continue to have, on them as individuals, how that culture and experiences impact them as members of the academy (in teaching, research, and service), but also in providing some guidance to graduate students and junior faculty. In effect, chapters explore navigating academic work (teaching, research, and service) through the lens of food and the transferable lessons that can be gleaned from our grandmothers’, mothers’, fathers’, and our own kitchens.

It is often the case that higher education fosters both imposter syndrome and a workaholic disposition that can be detrimental to teaching and research. What this book does, then, is to not only explore the ways in which what may seem as non-academic work such as cooking a meal can have on our work/life balance but, also, how to incorporate the very lessons of food into who we are as educators, how we teach, and how we can approach the work we do more broadly.

Through carefully curated chapters, this text presents a wide array of perspectives across food and cultural regions, as well as imparting insights from the academy from authors spanning the spectrum of the career. It is an important book full of valuable lessons for graduate students, faculty and teachers who wish to use its content in their classrooms.

Perfect for courses such as: Cultural Studies; Culturally-Responsive Pedagogy

T. Jameson Brewer, Ph.D., is an associate professor of social foundations of education at the University of North Georgia. His teaching experience spans the middle school, high school, undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels. Broadly conceptualized, his research focuses on the impact of privatization of public education by way of school vouchers, charter schools, alternative teacher certification, and homeschooling. Additionally, he researches the impacts of Christian nationalism on public schools and democracy. Find more at www.tjamesonbrewer.com.

Cleveland Hayes is the Associate Dean, Academic Affairs and professor of Education Foundations in the Urban Teacher Education Department at the School of Education at Indiana University-Indianapolis. Dr. Hayes teaches elementary foundations of education, elementary science methods, Critical Race Theory and qualitative research methods. Dr. Hayes’s considers himself an interdisciplinary researcher. His research interest includes the use of Critical Race Theory in Education, Historical and Contemporary Issues in Black Education to include the school to prison pipeline, Teaching and Learning in the Latino Community, Whiteness and the Intersections of Sexuality and Race. He is an active member of the American Education Research Association (AERA) at the Division Level, SIG level and committee level. He has served as the Co-Program Chair for Division G and has served as a section Co-Chair for Division K and a member of the Special Interest Group Executive Committee. He was the 2019 President of the Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA). He is also on the executive board of the American Education Studies Association (AESA) and the current Division G, Social Context of Education Vice President. Dr. Hayes’s research can be found in Democracy and Education, Qualitative Studies in Education, and Gender and Education, Urban Review, and Power of Education. In addition, he is the co-editor of the books titled: Unhooking from Whiteness: The Key to Dismantling Racism in the United States, Unhooking from Whiteness: Resisting the Esprit de Corps and Unhooking from Whiteness: It’s a Process. Lastly, he is the Co-Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education journal.