ASFS Book Award Winners
2024
Monograph
Naa Oyo A. Kwate. White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation (2023)
First Book
Bobby J. Smith II. Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (2023)
Edited Volume
James Farrer and David L. Wank, Eds. The Global Japanese Restaurant: Mobilities, Imaginaries, and Politics. University of Hawai’i Press (2023)
2023
Monograph
Ken Kolb. Retail Inequities: Reframing the Food Desert Debate, University of California Press (2021)
First Book
Melissa Fuster. Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City, University of North Carolina Press (2021)
Edited Volume
Emily Contois & Zenia Kish. Eds. Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation, U of Illinois Press (2022).
2022
Monograph
Joseph C. Ewoodzie. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson: Race, Class, and Food in the American South, Princeton University Press (2021)
First Book
Pascale Joassart-Marcelli. The $16 Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification, University of Washington Press (2021)
Edited Volume
Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese, Eds. Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice, U of Minnesota Press (2020).
Drs. Garth and Reese generously donated their prize money to support future ASFS BIPOC Fellowships.
2021
Monograph
Tom Scott-Smith. On An Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief, Cornell UP (2020)
First Book
Amanda L. Logan, The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security in Ghana, University of California Press (2020)
Edited Volume
Michelle T. King, Ed. Culinary Nationalism in Asia, Bloomsbury (2019)
Honorable Mention
Alison Hope Alkon, Yuki Kato, and Joshua Sbicca, Eds. A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City, NYU Press (2020)
2020
Monograph
Monica White. Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, UNC Press (2019)
First Book
Ashanté M. Reese. Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C., UNC Press (2019)
Edited Volume
Rachel Herrmann, Ed. To Feast on Us as Their Prey: Cannibalism and the Early Modern Atlantic, U. of Arkansas Press (2019)
2019
Monograph
Febe Armanios & Boğaç Ergene. Halal Food: A History, Oxford UP (2018)
First Book
Norah Mackendrick. Better Safe than Sorry: How consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, UC Press (2018)
Edited Volume
Montserrat Piera, Ed., Forging Communities: Food and Representation in Medieval and Early Modern Southwestern Europe, U. Arkansas Press (2018)
2018
Single Author (tie)
Nir Avieli. Food and Power: A Culinary Ethnography of Israel, U. Cal. Press (2017)
Erika Rappaport. A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World, Princeton UP (2017)
First Book
Margot Finn. Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution, Rutgers UP (2017)
Edited Volume
Devon G. Peña, Luz Calvo, Pancho McFarland, and Gabriel R. Valle, Eds. Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements, U. of Arkansas Press (2017)
2017
Single Author (tie)
Camille Bégin. Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for American’s Food, University of Illinois Press (2016)
Brad Weiss. Real Pigs: Shifting Values in the Field of Local Pork, Duke University Press (2016)
Edited Volume
Jennifer Jensen Wallach Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop, University of Arkansas Press (2015)
2016
Angela Jill Cooley. To Live and Dine in Dixie: The Evolution of Urban Food Culture in the Jim Crow South. University of Georgia Press, 2015.
2015
Amy Bentley. Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014
2014
Margaret Gray. Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013
2013 (tie)
Merry White. Coffee Life in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012
Kyla Wazana Tompkins. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century: New York: NYU Press, 2012
2012
Julie Guthman. Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism.
2011 (tie)
Tracey Deutsch. University of Minnesota, Building a Housewife’s Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century UNC Press, 2010
Carolyn de la Peña, University of California at Davis, Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda UNC Press, 2010
2010
Janet Poppendieck. Hunter College, SUNY, Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, UC Press, 2010
Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence Winners
2024
Krishnendu Ray, Kathleen Burke, Stephanie Jolly, “Food in the Indian Ocean World: Mobility, Materiality, and Cultural Exchange” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 9;2 (2023): 2-36.
2023
James Farrer, “From Cooks to Chefs: Skilled Migrants in a Globalising Culinary Field.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47, no. 10 (2021): 2359-2375.
2022
Nicholas Crawford, “The reasonable sustentation of human life”: Food Rations and the Problem of Provision in British Caribbean Slavery,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19, no. 2 (2021): 360-392.
Honorable Mention: Junfan Lin & Paul Waley, “Taste and Place of Nanxiong Cuisine in South China: A Regional Analytical Framework,” Food, Culture & Society (2021): https://doi.
2021
Miguel Cuj, Lisa Grabinsky, and Emily Yates-Doerr. “Cultures of Nutrition: Classification, Food Policy, and Health.” Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness (2020).
2020
Carla Cevasco. “Hunger Knowledges and Cultures in New England’s Borderlands, 1675–1770.” Early American Studies (Spring 2018): 255-281.
Honorable Mention: Travis Weisse. “‘Alone in a Sea of Rib-Tips’: Alvenia Fulton, Natural Health, and the Politics of Soul Food.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 74, no. 3 (2019): 292–315.
2019
Jonas House. “Insects Are Not ‘The New Sushi’: Theories of Practice and the Acceptance of Novel Foods.” Social and Cultural Geography 2018 DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2018.1440320.
2018
Rachel B. Herrmann. “Rebellion or Riot?: Black Loyalist Food Laws in Sierra Leone,” Slavery & Abolition, 37:4 (2016), 680-703.
2017
Audrey Russek. “Domestic Restaurants, Foreign Tongues” from Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop: Rethinking African American Foodways from Slavery to Obama Jennifer Jensen Wallach, Ed., U. of Arkansas Press, 2015
Honorable Mention:
Xaq Frohlich. “The informational turn in food politics: The US FDA’s nutrition label as information infrastructure” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 46, Issue 5 pp. 145–171
2016
Shana Klein. “Cultivating Fruit and Equality: The Still-Life Paintings of Robert Duncanson.” American Art Vol. 29, No. 2 (2015)
2015
Paul Freedman. “Women and Restaurants in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” Journal of Social History 47 (2014)
2014
Ty Matejowski. “The Incredible, Edible Balut: Ethnographic Perspectives on the Philippines’ Favorite Luminal Food.” Food, Culture, and Society Vol. 16 Issue 3 (Fall, 2013)
2013 – No award given
2012
Camille Bégin. “Partaking of choice poultry cooked a la southern style: Taste and Race in the New Deal Sensory Economy.” Radical History Review.
2011
Katharina Vester. “Regime Change: Gender, Class, and the Invention of Dieting in Post-Bellum America.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 44, Issue 1 (Fall 2010)
2010
Troy Bickham. “Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery and Imperialism in Eighteenth Century Britain.” Past and Present Vol 198, Issue 1, (Aug. 2008)
2009
Heather Paxson. “Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States.” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 23, Issue 1 (Feb. 2008)
Food, Culture & Society Article Award
This unsolicited award is given by the editors of the journal to the article published in the previous calendar year that best exhibits particular excellence and also represents the scope and mission of the ASFS.
2024
David Machin & Ariel Chen, “Designing food packaging to present healthy and ethical diets to the New Chinese middle classes.” Food, Culture & Society 26;1 (2023): 79-101
2023
Senja Laakso, Mari Niva, Veikko Eranti & Fanny Aapio, “Reconfiguring Everyday Eating: Vegan Challenge Discussions in Social Media” Food, Culture & Society, 25;2 (2022): 268-289
2022
Zsofia Mendly-Zambo, Lisa Jordan Powell & Lenore L. Newman (2021) “Dairy 3.0: cellular agriculture and the future of milk,” Food, Culture & Society, 24:5, 675-693
2021
Charles Z. Levkoe, Irena Knezevic, Donna Appavoo, Andrea Moraes & Steffanie Scott (2020) “Serving up food studies online: teaching about “food from somewhere” from nowhere,” Food, Culture & Society, 23:3, 434-453,
2020 (co-winners)
2019
Courtney Lewis, “Frybread Wars: Biopolitics and the consequences of selective United States healthcare practices for American Indians” FCS Vol 21 Issue 4 (August 2018): 427-448.
2018
Andrea Montanari. “The Stinky King: Western Attitudes toward the Durian in Colonial Southeast Asia,” FCS 20:3, 395-414.
2017
Susan Bridle-Fitzpatrick, “Tortillas, Pizza, and Broccoli: Social Class and Dietary Aspirations in a Mexican City” FCS 19:1 (March 2016): 93-128.
ASFS Award for Food Studies Pedagogy Winners
2024
Individual
Adrienne Bitar, Cornell University
Introduction to American Studies: Food and Nature
Team-Taught
No award given.
2023
2022
2021
Individual (Tie)
Emily Contois University of Tulsa
“Food Media”
2020
Team-Taught
2019
Individual
Miriam (Mim) Seidel, Chatham University
“Sustainable Consumption”
Team-Taught
Carmel Levitan, John Lang, and David Kasunic, Occidental College
“Culture of Food” (First Year Writing Seminar)
2018
Christy Shields, The American University
“Food, Culture and Communication”
2o17
Jonathan Deutsch, Drexel University
“Experimental Foods: Product Development”
2016
Nadine Lehrer & Sally Frey, Chatham University
“Culture and Politics of Meat”
2015
Jennifer Burns Bright, Honors College at the University of Oregon
“Bread 101”
2014 – No Award Given
2013
Nicki Tarvlevicz, University of Tasmania
“Understanding Asia through Food”
2012
Rachel Black, Boston University
“Urban Agriculture”
2011 (tied)
Amy Bentley, New York University, “Global Food Cultures: Mexico”
Netta Davis, Boston University, “Experiencing and Understanding Food through the Senses”
2009
Jacob Park and colleagues, Green Mountain College
“Food, Agriculture and Community Development in the Northeast”
Alex MacIntosh Graduate Prize Winners
2024
Joseph Bishop, Princeton University
“The Nutrients of Quelling a Riot: Employing Nutrition to Curb Social Unrest during New York City’s 1917 Protests against Food Prices”
2023
Mallika Khanna, Indiana University
“Authenticity, Ownership, and Cultural Commodification in Contemporary Diasporic Foodways”
2022
Julia Fine, University of Cambridge
“Translating Livelihoods into Labour: The Biopolitics of Toddy on the Bay of Bengal”
2021
Sucharita Kanjilal, UCLA
“The digital life of caste: Affect, food work and the social body online”
2020
2019
Matt Comi, University of Kansas
“‘Pure Yeast Culture’: Exploring Standard Lager and Industrial Beer production from 1850-1910”
2018
Emma McDonell, Indiana University
“Creating the Culinary Frontier: A Critical Examination of Peruvian Chefs’ Narratives of Lost/Discovered Foods”
2017 (tie)
Nick Dreher, University of Oregon
“Matcha as Superfood: Cultural Colonizing through Ignoring Origins?”
Brandie Roberts, University of the Pacific
“Becoming American: Anxiety, Food, and Identity in Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen“
2016
Bradley M. Jones, Washington University in St. Louis
“Consuming Heritage: Politics and Patrimony in the Reinvention of Lowcountry Cuisine”
2015
Adrienne Rose Johnson, Stanford University
“Diet Advice and the ‘Paradise Paradox’: Nutrition Narratives of the Pacific Islands”
2014
Gretchen Sneegas, Chatham University
“Attack of the Frankenfish: An Analysis of Political Cartoon Representations of the GMO Debate”
2013
Ariela Zycherman, Columbia University
“Shocdye as World: Localizing Modernity among the Tsimané Indians of the Bolivian Amazon”
2012
Adrienne Johnson, Stanford University
“The Pastoral Body: A Study of Food and Landscape in American Weight Loss Diets”
2011
Hanna Garth, University of California Los Angeles
“Disconnecting the Mind and Essentialized Fare: Identity, Consumption, and Mental Distress in Santiago de Cuba”
2010
Emily Yates-Doerr, New York University
“The Opacity of Reductionism: Nutritional Black-Boxing and the Meanings of Nourishment”
2009
In Sun Lee, New York University
“Japanese spin on Italian pasta: the social life of Wafuu pasta in Japan”
2008
Kelly Erby, Emory University
“Worthy of Respect: Black Waiters in Boston before the Civil War”
2007
Brione Bruce, York University
“Social Movement Networking: Organic Farming in Kerala, India”
2006
Scott Rosenbaum, New York University
“A Fox in the Vineyard: History, Culture, Meaning, and Taste”
Bill Whit Undergraduate Prize Winners
2024
Scout Santos, Cornell University
“Soy Boy: How the Unassuming Legume Threatens American Masculinity”
2023
No Award Given
2022
Vaidehi Kudhyadi, Denison University
“Selling Tastes of Home: Identity-work and Self-Orientalism in Arab American Foodways and Foodscapes in 1960s & 1970s New York City and Detroit”
2021
Anna Bianchi, Connecticut College
“The Federal Abandonment of Undocumented Immigrants During COVID: How Local Food Systems Support Under-Resourced Populations During Crisis”
2020
Adele Woodmanse, Harvard University
“Seeds, Chemicals, and Criollo Classifications in San Miguel del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico”
2019
Jaia Clingham-David, Cornell University
“Manipulating Naturalness: The Language of Lab-Grown Meat”
2018
Michelle Pruneah Kim, University of Toronto
“Complicating Food Rescue: The Dangers of the ‘Feed the Needy’ Rhetoric”
2017
Rosa Celeste Shipley, Kenyon College
“The Valuation of the Imagined Pastoral in Chef’s Table”
2016
Renata Kristen, University of Amsterdam
“Doctor to Patient as Farmer to Vegetable: Exploring Connections between Healing and Agriculture”
2015
Sydney Kajioka, University of the Pacific
“Culinary Internment of the Japanese-Americans”
2014
Helen Anderson, Stanford University
“Will it Absolve You or Seduce You?: Kale, Guilt, and A New Way of Looking at Morality”
2013
Emily Mendenhall, Duke University
“Losing the Landrace”
2012
Ellen O’Brien, James Madison University
“Cooperative Consumption: “Good Fooding” in a Food Conscious Community”
2011
Victoria Moré, Illinois State University
“Dumpster Dinners: Freeganism at Illinois State University”
2010
Neal Akatsuka, University of Hawai’i
“Haunting Erotics of Gastronomic Desire as Bodily Penetration: Consuming Genetically Modified Food in Japan”
2009
Adrienne Johnson, UC Berkeley
“The American Grotesque: Competitive eating and the cultural meaning of American bodies”
2008
Sveinn Sigurdsson & Ashlan Falletta-Cowden, Lawrence University
“From sustenance to symbol: a multi-generational study of traditionality and modernization in the Icelandic diet”
2007
Joanne Hocking, University of Adelaide, Australia
“From the top of the tree: Fruit, the aristocracy and class distinction in early modern western European paintings”
2006
Andrea Davis, Hampshire College
“A Nutritional Analysis of a Local and Seasonal Diet in the Pioneer Valley”