Food Stories

Navigating the Academy with Cultural Lessons from the Kitchen

T. Jameson Brewer and Cleveland Hayes, T. Jameson Brewer, Cleveland Hayes

• Publisher: Myers Education Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781975506988
• eBook ISBN: 9781975507008
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Content
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Academic Buffet: Navigating the Balance Between Education and Empanadas
• Chapter 2. Ordinary Ingredients: Hosting as a Pedagogical Practice
• Chapter 3. “Stand There and Watch”: Witnessing Cooking Methods in Black Studies
• Chapter 4. Soul/le Credentials: Collards as Resources for Academic Participation
• Chapter 5. The Hawaiian Underground Imu: Possibilities Steaming Beneath the Surface of the Academy
• Chapter 6. Ditching the Pipeline and Living the Curriculum of Bread
• Chapter 7. Louisiana Lagniappe
• Chapter 8. Sihk jó faahn meih a?: Collectivist Healing Wisdom Lineages Embedded in Asian Foods
• Chapter 9. The Southern Kitchen: Resistance Epistemologies Cultivated Through “Soul Food.”
• Chapter 10. Feeling and Feeding the Immigrant Void in Academia
• Chapter 11. Inclusion Is Not a Microwavable Meal: Cooking Up Critical Embrace in Academic Communities
• Chapter 12. Reaching Back to Move Forward: Using Matrilineal Recipes to Create Kinship Within the Academy
• Chapter 13. Thinking Beyond the Chocolate Chips: A [Comfortable] Baking Journey Toward Scholarly Possibility
• Chapter 14. Lessons for Hopeful and Hungry Academics: Conviviality, Community, and Rootedness Inspired Through the Sharing of Food and Kitchen Stories
• Chapter 15. More Than (Just) Something to Eat: Reflections on How Food Invites Shared Learning and Renewed Commitments to Justice
• Chapter 16. Critical Lessons Learned While Making Cinnamon Rolls with My Son
• Chapter 17. Pedagogies of Maíz: Living Ancestral Saberes and Cultivating Relational Teaching and Learning Practices
• Chapter 18. A Cross-Cultural Gastronomy: Feminist Narratives on Boundaries and Bridges
• About the Authors
• Index