6: Food Studies in the Humanities and New Life’s Journeys

In this episode of EPFV, I, Meredith E. Abarca, speak with two of my former students, Consuelo Salas and Joshua I. Lopez. We discuss how and why Food Studies has become central to their postgraduate work. I first met Consuelo Salas when she took a required course to obtain a BA in American Literature, “Introduction to Literary Studies” in the Department of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. This course introduced students to literary theories by anchoring them through food. Consuelo speaks of her initial reaction to the concept of examining life's cultural, social and economic complexities through food. She speaks of specific class assignments that led her to fully experience the rich and complex role food plays in our daily lives. She also addresses of the impact seeing life through a critical food perspective has had in personal life, in her views of El Paso’s food landscape, and in her professional career as an Assistant professor in Writing Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Joshua I. Lopez also speaks of how learning about food studies as a scholarly research area has impacted his life. I first met him when I gave a lecture on food as a system of communication to an undergraduate course in Cultural Anthropology  he was taken. Joshua, intrigued by this idea, he continue to explore it while obtaining his Master’s degree in American Literature. In this episode, shares a moving story of when he came out to his mother. Without responding to her son’s news, she simply made him a cup of hot chocolate, placed it in front of him, and told him not to stay up too late. Through this gesture, Joshua knew he was loved and that’s all it matters. Through the courses he has taught at the University of Texas at El Paso and at El Paso Community College, Joshua has designed assignments to help numerous of students understand and communicate with the voice of food. As a Ph.D. student of Food History at the University of North Texas, he focuses his research on gathering food oral stories and understanding the impact of “food voice” in people’ everyday life.