David E. Sutton

Greece and Food (and Greek food!) these have been passions of mine ever since I was a kid. I loved reading Greek Mythology, and I loved cooking (learned from my father, and his Syrian background). I went on a study abroad program in Greece when I was 17 on the island of Kalymnos and that cemented it for me (both Greece and the food). So when I decided to study anthropology, I knew I wanted to work in Greece, but my main interest for my first book was how Greeks today (on Kalymnos) think about the past. As I asked people to tell me their memories, and their versions of History, I was struck by how many of these stories had details of food in them, even when the food was not the point of the story. And I was struck by how people would offer food to me and say: “Eat, so that you remember Kalymnos.” What was this connection of food and memory? That’s what I explore in my subsequent work where I show that food memory is not simply a personal attribute—some remember, some don’t—but is embedded in specific cultural practices. When I’m not writing about Greek food, I write about Hollywood movies from an anthropological perspective. I also love cooking, especially Greek food, and in the picture above I’m making a cup of Greek coffee in a long-handled “Briki.”