A Brush With Academia

I've contributed to a food studies encyclopedia. Plus: The Desk Digest for the past month.

Last spring, I had the privilege of teaching culinary tourism to students in Boston University’s food studies masters program. I published all of my lectures here—find them in this selected index of posts—and I’m happy to say they’ve been consolidated into a cite-able entry in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies.

The co-author, José Lopez Ganam, was my teaching assistant for the class and, in completing edits and additions on this article, remains my academic translator and savior. He took over while I profiled Gisele, the supermodel, for a fashion magazine, because we really can have it all if we have great people in our corner! I’m also happy to say I’ll be teaching in the BU program again next year—full information to come!

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Upcoming Workshops

I have one more edition of the Newsletter Workshop coming on November 12, and in December, I’ll be doing an offshoot on research and organization. A lot of questions about workflow, organization, and maintaining an independent editorial calendar have come up in the workshops, so this will answer those questions. We’ll talk more about pitching vs. newsletter, books, and anything else!

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“How Do You Eat? No. 2”

This installment of “How Do You Eat?” features Vidar Bergum in Istanbul, Clarissa Wei in Taiwan, and Devin Kate Pope in Phoenix.

“From the Desk Recommends… Funding the Arts in a Casino Economy” (Paid)

“I did a lot of reading this past month outside of books: archival stuff, current stuff, and a wide swath of topics. I’ve made subcategories here to try to make it easier to skim through for what interests you, from the Arts to Literature to Climate to Money to Food. (I would also like to point out here that there’s very little distinction between the stories under “Money” and “Food”… )”

“Where Fashion Meets Food”

“My decision hasn’t been difficult to abide by, and I believe that this is because I’ve had so much practice over the years being considerate of my food choices—once as a vegan, more recently as a vegetarian—that it became second nature to second-guess what broader cultural forces seem to be asking of me: The pressure to eat meat to fit in, to be easy, to go with the flow feels very similar to the pressure of trends; they have, to me, a similar cultural role and texture.”

“The Monthly Menu: The Cost of Local Eggs” (Paid)

“Simply put, it doesn’t feel as shitty and out of control. It has much in common with the case Errol Schweizer, of The Checkout, put forth earlier this week for employee-owned grocery stores and what Devin Kate Pope, at The Good Enough Weekly, recently wrote about through examination of cottage food laws.”

“Sources of My Ongoing Fashion Education” (Paid)

“I’ve always admired fashion for its artistry, of course, but I’ve also always allowed it to clue me into a person, as I fancy myself an amateur detective of the inconsequential (a.k.a. a culture writer)—looking at people’s taste and tendencies beyond designers and into style reflects what’s inside.”

“The Desk Book Club: ‘Eating to Extinction’ October Discussion” (Paid)

Reading the second part of Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction. We voted on when to have the Zoom chat about this book, which Saladino will be visiting!

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