Essays

Fabio Parasecoli scholarly work appears in an extensive body of articles in peer-reviewed journals, essays and chapters in edited books, as well as conference proceedings.

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

 

 Why Should We Care? Two experiences in the Politics of Food and Food Research (with Agata Bachórz) Ethnologia Polona (2020)

The aim of this article is to analyse the political aspects of food and their significance as an object of study. The first author of the article has studied Polish society as an insider, while the other author had previously conducted research in other countries and three years ago started exploring Poland and Polish gastronomy, finding himself in the role of outsider. Both scholars have been recently working together. The power relations between the societies and the academic worlds from which they come from turned out to be crucial to the research dynamics and became one of the paper’s key interests. Three main topics provide the structure of the collaborative paper: 1) the question of the authors’ positionality; 2) food as a phenomenon that is intrinsically political, and the legitimacy issues related to its study within academia and to scholars’ engagement outside it; and 3) the power and inequality dimensions of food research. The authors agree that inextricable connection of food and politics has not only an academic or theoretical dimension, but impacts the realities of people’s lives.

 

Food Systems, Design, Things: Reading Heidegger, Revista de la Red Latinoamericana de Food Design (2020)

Heidegger reminds us that a fundamental dimension of being human is our entanglement with things and with the world in a totality, which take the form of a relationship of care and expresses itself in temporality. This is particularly true about food, which is one of the first aspects we relate to since infancy. We operate in a world that is already there: food design implies sifting through reality, identifying which fragments of the past should be kept and which should be discarded, reassembling them and adding to them in innovative ways that prelude to the future we hope for. As such, food design is inherently political. No design project, no interaction with things, is free of judgment. Food design could become a space of possibilities and empowerment for those Latin American communities whose voices have been silenced or distorted. These dynamics would bring into local food design the relationship of “care” that Heidegger indicated as a central aspect of human experience.

 

Eating and Drinking in Global Brooklyn (with Mateusz Halawa). Food Culture and Society (2019)

Teaching Food History: A Discussion Among Practitioners (with Beth Forrest, Erica J. Peters, Megan J. Elias, and Jeffrey M. Pilcher). Global Food History (2017).

This roundtable discussion examines pedagogical practices in the emerging field of food history. Participants shared their experiences in a wide variety of different institutional settings and considered the differences between a food history classroom and more traditional history courses. Topics included how best to teach the history of taste, chronological and temporal scales of analysis, and issues of social justice. Discussants also problematized the epistemological limits of food history with particular focus on the classroom and the best way to provide educational outcomes that serve the future interest of students. Finally, the panel reflected on new directions for teaching food and how to expand individual classes into a larger curriculum.

 

Food, Research, Design: What can Food Studies bring to Food Design Education? International Journal of Food Design vol. 2 no. 2 (2017): 15-25.

As the presence and visibility of food design grows in academia, synergies are particularly promising with food studies, which promotes and practises the analysis of cultural, social and political issues concerning the production, distribution and consumption of food in its material and cultural aspects, as well as in its social and political implications. The analytical tools developed in food studies have the potential to inform and integrate the practical applications that food design focuses on, while food design methods can help food studies scholars to include applied approaches in their work. The article presents three cases in which food studies analysis and methods were introduced in educational formats otherwise focussed – explicitly or not explicitly – on design.

 

Starred Cosmopolitanism: Celebrity Chefs, Documentaries, and the Circulation of Global Desire. Semiotica vol 211 (2016): 315-340.

Several documentaries about celebrity chefs were released between 2010 and 2012, building on trends that have turned knowledge of and access to fine dining restaurants into a crucial arena for globalized elite’s construction of social status and cultural capital. The analysis of three of these films – Three Stars, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and Step up to Your Plate – indicates how media contribute to the formation of a global canon of practices, performances, and discourses that naturalize the accomplished, knowledgeable, and male chef trained in established and prestigious food traditions as the culinary ideal.

 

Il cibo e la storia: metodi e ricerca. Sulla Via del Catai vol. 8 no. 13 (2015): 9-19.

È indubbio che la ricerca storica sia importante per capire l’origine e lo sviluppo delle culture gastronomiche, come nel caso di quelle italiana e cinese. Con un passato secolare e diffuse ben oltre i loro confini originari, entrambe sono complesse e articolate in cucine locali e regionali ben identificabili, ciascuna con ingredienti, tecniche, piatti, e tradizioni proprie. In realtà, non è semplice definire la cucina italiana, come pure quella cinese, come espressioni di identità’ nazionali: esse sono infatti il risultato di dinamiche politiche relativamente recenti e ancora in atto.

 

Tasting a New Home: Food Representations in Italian Neorealism Cinema. Food & Foodways 23 (2015): 36-56.

This article explores how representations of food contribute to the construction of home as an imagined place and shows that different representations result in multiple meanings of home. As food and the lack thereof constituted urgent issues in post-World War II Italy, directly impacting the welfare of individuals and communities, it is not surprising that Italian Neorealist films frequently featured representations of food production, preparation, and consumption. Food-related images not only contributed to the overall realistic effect but were also meant as a form of participation in the heated cultural and political debates about what both the private homes of Italians and their shared national home would be after 20 years of Fascist regime. By highlighting the food scarcity suffered by the working class and the relative abundance enjoyed by limited segments of the population, Neorealist filmmakers blurred the boundaries between the private and the public, bridging the social tensions in the civic domain with the domestic sphere.

 

God’s Diets: The Fat Body and The Bible as an Eating Guide in Evangelical Christianity. Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society 4 (2015): 141-158.

As much as some Christians may want to distance themselves from secularism, they find themselves immersed in a cultural environment that draws attention not only to their physical condition, but also to their body image. Particularly in the United States, where being “overweight” is often interpreted as a sign of lack of will and determination, an expression of psychological disorders, and a sure cause of health problems, Christians have been looking for viable solutions to their health and fitness conundrums while maintaining their religious identity and their practices. It seems only natural that they turn to the highest source of authority: God and his word, the Bible. In this paper I focus on the dieting plans and approaches that have developed using the Bible, and in particular the Hebrew Bible as their blueprint. Through a semiotic and discourse analysis of examples in print and on the Internet, I argue that very contemporary worries about the individual self are at the center of the immense popularity of faith-based diets in evangelical Christian, often U.S.-based, communities.

 

Gluttonous crimes: Chew, comic books, and the ingestion of masculinity. In “Eating like a ‘man’: Food and the performance and regulation of masculinities,” special issue of Women’s Studies International Forum 44 (2014): 236-246.

Food-related embodied experiences are entangled in all aspects of subject positions, from ethnicity to class, from age to gender. When it comes to masculinity, food plays a very important role as an arena where various models of masculinity are negotiated. Representations of men around food in a specific medium – comic books and detective stories – can establish, question, reinforce, reproduce or destroy cultural assumptions about masculinity and gender relations. The comic book Chew employs irony and tropes from horror, detective, and action genres to blur gender and ethnic stereotypes about eating and ingestion that are otherwise prevalent in many forms of popular culture, from movies to cookbooks.

 

When a Weirdo Stirs the Pot: Food and Masculinity in Ratatouille. Projector: A Journal of Film, Media, and Culture, May 2013.

This article aims to unpack the connections that narrative and visual elements in Ratatouille establish between food, status, and different models of masculinity, and the ways the film engages viewers about what it means to grow into being a successful—and, more specifically, male—adult. Cooking and eating offer viewers untapped opportunities to reflect on the ideas and behaviors that constitute acceptable masculinities, also in terms of prestige and respect. What matters is not only the food that protagonists enjoy and ingest, but also the norms, values, and practices about eating they embody, especially in terms of gender and class identity.

 

El marketing de las identidades: Los aspectos socio-políticos de las indicaciones geográficas. In Perspectivas Rurales, Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (2012).

 

Shared Meals and Food Fights: Geographical Indications, Rural Development, and the Environment. With Aya Tasaki. In Environment and Society: Advances in Research vol. 2 no. 1 (2011): 106-123.

The article highlights relevant issues within the global debate on geographical indications, as they relate to food products. Geographical indications, a form of intellectual property designated by considering principally the place of origin of products, have become a hot topic among producers, activists, economists, and politicians worldwide. Commercial and legal issues related to them have generated complex negotiations in international organizations and national institutions, while their cultural aspects have stimulated theoretical debates about the impact of global trade on local identities. Geographical indications could become a valid tool to implement community-based, sustainable, and quality-oriented agriculture, depending on the sociopolitical environment and whether they are relevant for the producers involved, affordable in terms of administrative and management costs, and applicable on different scales of production. The article also explores the environmental impact of geographical indications and their potential in ensuring the livelihood of rural communities in emerging economies and promoting sustainable agricultural models.

 

Savoring Semiotics: Food in Intercultural Communication. Social Semiotics vol. 21 no. 5 (2011): 645-663.

Food is both a relevant source of signification and an effective form of communication, based on a limited – although very wide – variety of edible substances, practices, beliefs, and norms that form a network of interconnected systems. These systems and their uses in social practice, constituting a specific semiosphere, are challenged when their users travel and are confronted with unfamiliar foodways in terms of ingredients, cooking techniques, flavorings, preparations, utensils, meal structure, table manners, distribution of the meals during the day, and social dynamics. When different culinary semiospheres interact, food-related experiences reveal the cultural character of gastronomic competences, forcing individuals to engage with otherness through embodied communication.

 

A Taste of Louisiana: Mainstreaming Blackness though Food in The Princess and the Frog. Journal of African American Studies vol. 14 no. 4 (2010): 450-468.

The Gender of Geographical Indications: Women, Place, and the Marketing of Identities. Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies vol. 10 no. 6 (2010): 467-478.

n Western Europe and in the United States, a rekindled interest in food and wine has stimulated the development of value-based food labels that define products based on their immaterial, cultural, and also political contents; among these, the geographical indications (GIs), now protected by the World Trade Organization, refer principally to the place of origin of the product. Despite their commercial and cultural relevance, the evaluation of the impact of GIs on a community usually does not consider gender issues, often misrepresenting or ignoring women’s role as the keepers of local traditions, especially in the case of seeds, shepherding products, and their culinary uses. This article (a) analyzes the relationships between gender, place, and local tradition in the case of GIs (b) and addresses the questions of who reaps the benefits of techniques and know-how transmitted and protected by women, and how the role of women is acknowledged in the developing regulations regarding the products involved.

 

Bootylicious: Food and the Female Body in Contemporary Pop Culture. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly vol. 35 no. 1 & 2 (2007): 110-125 .

Feeding hard bodies: Food and nutrition in men’s fitness magazines. Food and Foodways vol. 13 no. 1-2 (2005): 17-37.
Reprinted in Food and Culture, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, Routledge (2007).

Body image has become relevant to many men, as the flourishing of male fitness magazines and the consequent development of theoretical studies on the subject demonstrate. In this article, I will examine the close connections between food, masculinities, and body image in male fitness magazines, a booming sector of the fitness and wellness publishing industry. I will attempt a qualitative analysis of editorial features and advertising pages of the October 2002 issues of Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness. I will also analyze Men’s Health Guide to Women, a supplement to Men’s Health published in the same month, designed as a sort of a how-to manual for men who want to increase their success with women. Since I will deal with communication and media, I will adopt a semiotic approach, emphasizing how the frequent references to food and eating, which clearly constitute a deep concern, actually construct a coherent discourse about masculinities, using words, images, and metaphors as signs within a complex code that needs to be deciphered.

 

Food and Pop Culture: Teaching Critical Theory through Food. Food, Culture and Society vol.7 no.1 (2004):  147-157.

Food studies is a developing discipline. An enticing feature of this new field of study is that it can encompass many approaches and different topics that range from history to sociology, from anthropology to women’s studies, and nutrition. However, maybe in search of recognition from more established academic quarters, little attention has been paid to aspects that would fall under the heading of cultural or media studies by email or phone at 718-646-4191 (tonight), 800-398-3570 (1/7 – 1/pec, especially those belonging to popular culture. As a food journalist, I never underestimated the impact of communication on the ways we perceive, consume and produce food. On the other hand, food plays such an important role in human life that it emerges in many aspects of our culture, as well as in those apparently less connected with it. Developing an analytical framework to handle these topics is an important task for food studies. In this paper I will illustrate my experience teaching an undergraduate class in “Food and the Arts”, where I introduced the students to methods from both semiotics and critical theory as practical tools they could apply to analyze the complex interactions between food and all kinds of expressions of popular culture.

 

Postrevolutionary Chowhounds: Food, Globalization and the Italian Left. Gastronomica vol.3 no. 3 (2003): 29-39.

Deconstructing soup: Ferran Adriá’s culinary universe. Gastronomica vol.1  no.1 (2001): 61-73.

 

 

BOOK CHAPTERS AND PROCEEDINGS

 

Global Brooklyn: How Instagram and Postindustrial Design Are Shaping How We Eat (with Mateusz Halawa). In Fabio Parasecoli and Mateusz Halawa, eds. Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities, London: Bloomsbury Academic 2020, pp. 3-36

This introduction proposes an analytical framework for studying the emergent cultural formation around eating and drinking that we call Global Brooklyn. It is constituted by a recurring, vaguely codified set of material objects, environments, practices, and discourses which materialize in cities throughout the world in coffee places and restaurants. Taking an ideal type approach, we describe: (1) the designed materialities and services of rugged authenticity in post-industrial settings; (2) a new embodiment celebrating manual labor and manifesting a shift in taste judgement; (3) the role of digital and visual communication in creating and sharing experiences and values; (4) a reflexive, knowledge-intensive aspect of practices and strategies of actors; and (5) appeals to an ethos of authenticity and craft. The essay aims at bridging food studies with design and a closer engagement with material culture in objects and spaces.

 

Thinking Food through Design (with Mateusz Halawa). In Fabio Parasecoli and Mateusz Halawa, eds. Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities, London: Bloomsbury Academic 2020, pp. 188-196

In the conclusion, we reflect on the modality of diffusion of Global Brooklyn within the larger debates about food globalization. We do not propose an Americanization thesis, in which a central location broadcast abroad a model, each paper provides elements for a complex theory of circulation, embeddedness and variation. We assess the relationship between local and global through various forms of mediation in terms of material objects, design, practices, and valuation. Furthermore, we explore dynamics of gentrification and the inherent tensions between a desire for ethos and community and the reality of upscale consumption. Overall, we examine how the Global Brooklyn trend is embedded in different locations while offering models and practices that contribute to shaping the model itself and to ensuring its success.

 

What is Food Design? Foreword in Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter, Food Design Small: Reflections on Food, Design and Language

Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter propose a reflection that, as often happens with good and stimulating thoughts, poses questions instead of providing answers. At the beginning, they wonder whether “food can be considered a design object in the same way as electrical appliances, cars, or furniture.” This is a central issue because food, unlike other objects of design, is incorporated into us through the act of ingestion, and it is entangled since infancy in the emotional and psychological dynamics that contribute to the construction of individual and social identities

 

The Power of Taste. In Jarosław Dumanowski, Andrzej Kuropatnicki, and Fabio Parasecoli (eds.). The Power of Taste: Europe at the Royal Table (forthcoming 2020)

The conference at the Wilanów Royal Palace included many very interesting talks about specific topics that explored the connection between power and food in different places and at different times. Is it possible to build on such contributions to outline recurring themes that can help us reflect not only on the use of food and taste as tools of power and socio-cultural dominance in the past, but also today? Can we detect enduring dynamics that provide valid explanations for phenomena extremely dispersed in space and time? Can we identify elements – material objects, practices, values, and representations – that have endured throughout history while undergoing changes and evolution? What other elements have instead disappeared, and why?

 

Tradition, Heritage, and Intellectual Property in the Global Food Market. In Ilaria Porciani (ed.), Food Heritage and Nationalism in Europe. Abingdon, UK: Routledge (2019)

Intellectual property (IP) instruments, such as the geographical indications included in the WTO’s TRIPS agreement, have acquired growing relevance in the identification, support, and protection of local and traditional food products. However, due their legal nature and their regulatory structure, IP-based apparatuses risk stifling the evolution of traditions, which by nature change and shift over time. Furthermore, they are not easy to establish for many communities, especially in the Global South, due to their complexity, their rootedness in Western juridical systems, and the financial and logistic efforts they require. Is IP the only viable tool to effectively support local and traditional practices, as well as the product originating from them? Or can other approaches, such as UNESCO immaterial cultural heritage, Slow Food’s Presidia, and the new expanding field of Indigenous Knowledge, contribute to their survival and expansion, while letting them transform to respond to new contexts and environments?

 

The Invention of Authentic Italian Food: Narratives, Rhetoric, and Media. In Roberta Sassatelli (ed.), The Invention of Authentic Italian Food: Narratives, Rhetoric, and Media. Basingstoke, UK: Springer Nature (2019), pp. 17-42.

Eat it, don’t tweet it: l’alimentation et la satire vidéo aux États-Unis. In Laurent Baridon, Frédérique Desbussions, and Dominic Hardy, Satire Visuelle. Paris: Conseil de recherches et sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH) and Institut national d¹histoire de l’art. INHA, Paris (2019).

Les régimes alimentaires sont devenus un objet – et en même temps l’instrument –  de satire aux Etats Unis, où la nourriture a acquis une grande visibilité dans les médias et dans les débats sociaux et politiques. Les choix personnels, du végétarien au refus du gluten, du refus des aliments industriels à l’identification avec certaines ethnies ou coutumes locales, sont utilisés par un grand nombre d’individus pour affirmer leurs identités culturelles. En suivant l’intérêt du public, la satire – du théâtre aux vignettes dans les magazines – s’est rapidement emparée de ces thèmes. Dans cette communication, je vais plutôt me concentrer sur les différentes formes brèves de satire audiovisuelles, telles que les sketches dans des émissions comiques télévisées (Portlandia, Key & Peele, Saturday Night Live), les dessins animés de South Park, et les vidéos sur Internet. En utilisant les instruments de la sémiotique et de l’analyse du discours appliqués au visuel, ma communication explore les représentations du corps humain et de ses interactions avec la nourriture en tant qu’instruments de satire contre les choix alimentaires et les positions culturelles et sociales qu’ils reflètent. À travers des blagues et des dialogues amusants, les scénarios opèrent une médiation et un adoucissement des aspects visuels de l’ingestion les plus destructifs et violents, tout en gardant des éléments de critique politique envers la société américaine contemporaine.

 

Slow-Food et la gastronomie: une voie de libération? In Julia Csergo, Olivier Etcheverria (eds.), Les Imaginaires de la cuisine. Lyon: Fondation Jacques Cartier (2019), pp. 187-201.

Rethinking the Global Table: Food Design as Future Making (with Mateusz Halawa). In May Rosenthal and Catherine Flood (eds), Food: Bigger than The Plate. London: Victoria and Albert Museum (2019), pp. 80-89.

Food does not work. Our global food system, torn between feast and famine, has proven increasingly unsustainable, unmasking the often unfair power relations among its stakeholders. The structural issues that plague it, neither natural nor inevitable, are not hidden any longer under a veneer of plenty. As the world is desperately looking for alternatives, food is also revealed to us as a design problem. As Bill Brown points out, we ‘confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us … when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption, and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily’.¹ Especially today, a pervasive sense of crisis in terms of environmental sustainability, social inequality and public health emergencies confronts us with the ‘thingness’ of the food system and the dynamics that support it. We realize that these malfunctioning parts are frequently man-made, constituting badly designed failures of foresight or empathy. Together with engineers and scientists, designers have been instrumental in generating technological innovations, agricultural advancements and industrial efficiencies that have ensured food security for growing segments of the world population. So far, designers have not been in the position to revolutionize the existing supply chains and capitalist market arrangements, as partnerships with the food industry and transnational corporations have usually generated incremental adjustments rather than systemic sea changes. These dynamics raise questions about how design can foster innovation in the food system. Major transformations of strategic material infrastructures and fundamental social and economic priorities entail interventions that require design to participate in collective action and political processes, going beyond its traditional modes of operation. To what extent are designers ready to shift the terms of their practice? How are they rethinking their role?

 

Food Studies: Where do We Go From Here? In Paweł Hamera, Andrzej Kuropatnicki, and Artur Piskosz (eds.), Food and Drinks in Context. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UP (2019), pp. 7-10

Eating Power: Food, Culture, and Politics. In Tomas Marttila (ed.), Discourse, Culture and Organization: Inquiries into Relational Structures of Power. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), pp. 129-153.

Food, if interpreted just as an expression of biological needs, may come across as natural and apolitical. It does not take much to realize that food is actually profoundly entangled with power dynamics, social structures, and environmental issues that assume immediate, tangible meanings. Both as a material object with innumerable and diverse uses and in its cultural and media representations, food reflects, supports, and reinforces values and practices that are predicated on the framing of whole categories of people as inferior and exploitable. Gender, class, and race identity issues underlie food-related behaviors, as well as their social and economic consequences in terms of accessibility, affordability, and labor relations, generating oppression and injustice. In this context, hegemonic analysis allows us a deeper understanding of such biopolitical dynamics, while providing crucial tools for interventions aimed at introduction change and social innovation.

 

Cuisine et design: Art, fonction, et communication. In Julia Csergo & Frédérique Desbuissons (eds.), Le cuisinier et l’art.. Art de cuisiner et cuisines d’artistes, 18e-21e siècle. Paris: INHA/Menu Fretin (2018), pp. 77-91.

Cet essai s’efforce de démontrer que le design, outil théorique et moyen efficace d’imaginer et de créer des objets, des sensations, des environnements et des systèmes innovants, occupe une place de plus en plus importante dans ces dynamiques.
Il fait le lien, d’une part, entre inspiration et créativité et, de l’autre, entre aspects pratiques et entreprise commerciale. En soulignant les aspects esthétiques de la gastronomie et en permettant aux chefs de chercher l’innovation et d’exprimer leur vision singulière tout en tenant compte des contraintes logistiques et financières, le design a démontré qu’il pouvait harmoniser des priorités différentes et apparemment contradictoires. Il n’y a pas de con it entre simplicité et recherche, entre cuisine ménagère et concept raf né, entre traditionnel et avant-garde, entre humanisme et technologie.

 

Food and Cinema: an Evolving Relationship. In Kathleen Lebesco and Peter Naccarato (eds.), Handbook of Food and Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury (2018), pp 155-168.

Food has always played an important role in cinema, starting from the Lumiere brothers and the seminal A Corner in Wheat by DW Griffith (1909). At the time, food was mostly used as a prop to push stories ahead, to provide occasions for movement and comedy, or to allow characters to express themselves or to interact. At times, as in Griffith’s case or in Chaplin’s Modern Times, it was already used a symbol for larger social or political issues.  Food was expensive and complicated to use as a prop, due to the cost of preparing several identical servings or spreads to ensure identical takes to be later used in editing.  With a few exceptions in the 1960s and 70s (Tom Jones, La Grande Bouffe), it is only from the mid-1980s that we see food becoming the protagonist and the narrative engine, originating what has been defined as a “food film” genre. This chapter explores the origin of this shift, its development and transition from art house to mainstream, and the possible future.

 

Food, Design, Innovation: From Professional Specialization to Citizens’ Involvement. In Kathleen Lebesco and Peter Naccarato (eds.), Handbook of Food and Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury (2018), pp. 27-39.

Food design is a new and burgeoning field of practice and research whose goal, in the definition of the Food Design North America association, is to “improve our relationship with food, individually or collectively, in the most diverse ways and instances. Its actions can relate to the design of food products, materials, practices, environments, systems, processes and experiences.” Different paradigms and approaches exist among practitioners, causing confusion among non-experts and consumers. Under this umbrella, we find work ranging from culinary design to the design of kitchen objects and appliances, technological innovations applied to growing food, cooking, and consuming, the organization of events and performances, the construction of environments for food production, distribution, and consumption (artisan workshops, markets, restaurants, etc.), the management of services in hospitality and tourism, and food system strategies.  This chapter outlines the development of this new field, its different expressions, and possible directions for its future.

 

Food Studies y el Food Design Sistémico. Proceedings of the IV Encuentro Red Latinoamericana de Food Design, October 19-22, 2016, Ensenada, Mexico. refLaFD, 2017 (pp. 98-122).

En los últimos años, el diseño ha dirigido su atención a la alimentación, reflejando expansión de sus horizontes primero enfocada en objetos y espacios y ahora incluyendo procesos, servicios y sistemas. Los food designersno sólo crean nuevos productos, empaques, aplicaciones tecnológicas, y lugares de producción y consumo, sino también conceptualizan como los objetos y espacios participan en fenómenos más amplios que tienen un impacto en la sostenibilidad a largo plazo y en la calidad de vida de individuos y comunidades. Debido a su objeto específico de investigación y su enfoque, los food studiestienen un gran potencial para establecer colaboraciones positivas y fructíferas con el food design. Las herramientas analíticas desarrolladas en los food studiespueden informar e integrar las aplicaciones del food design,mientras que los métodos y las prácticas del food designpueden ayudar a los food studies a integrar enfoques aplicados en su trabajo.

Global Trade, Food Safety, and the Fear of Invisible Invaders. Social Research vol. 84 no. 2 (2017): 183-202.

The attention paid to how food is produced, dis-tributed, bought, cooked, and disposed of has reached new heights, causing unprecedented anxiety at all levels, from the personal to the international. Wherever there is a body, be it physical or political, and such body is conceptualized and experienced as an autonomous and self-contained reality, the fear of dangerous intrusions caused by the unavoidable necessity of ingestion is often palpable. Food and eating thus become fields in which the Other—over which we inevi-tably feel we have limited control—is resisted and at times fought against. Individuals may not want to consume products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or growth hormones; they are wary of food adulterations and counterfeits; they may prefer to con-sume local products, even when what counts as “local” varies greatly; they may be suspicious of foreign ingredients and dishes, expressing reactions that range from curiosity to outright refusal; and finally, they may want to support local food jobs, at the regional and national level, by limiting imports from abroad. Furthermore, the possibility of food-borne diseases and pests, such as the avian flu, makes food imports a delicate and controversial aspect of international trade. Overall, individual citizens and societies fear contaminations and ill-nesses that may come through what we ingest, both physically and metaphorically.How do fears of otherness impinge on our experience of food? In reflecting on this question I do not aim to be exhaustive but rath-er to outline directions for future, larger research projects, with the goal of bridging different fields and disciplines such as biology, bio-engineering, environmental sciences, economics, sociology, and poli-tics. Here we will see how preoccupations about individual bodies are reflected and generated by concerns ranging from the micro (for instance, GMOs and the intestinal biome) to the macro (the environment and international trade).

 

Food Design y Food Studies: La Puesta en Común. Proceedings of “Disfruta Diseño,” II Encuentro Red Latinoamericana de Food Design, October 20-24, 2014, Bogotà, Colombia. refLaFD, 2017 (pp. 40-49).

Quiero explorar  las posibles conexiones entre el Food Design, el sector de investigación y de práctica profesional para el que estamos aquí, y los Food Studies. En espa-ñol se podría traducir la expresión come “Estu-dios Alimentarios” porque se refiere a la dis-ciplina que analiza y investiga la comida y los alimentos en sus aspectos culturales, sociales, políticos y ambientales, desde la producción hasta el consumo y la utilización de la basu-ra. Pero prefiero utilizar la expresión ingles de “Food Studies’ porque creo sea más expresiva y más inclusiva que “estudios alimentarios.”

 

From Stove to Screen: Food Porn, Professional Chefs, and the Construction of Masculinity in Films. In Silvia Bottinelli and Margherita D’Ayala Valva (eds.), The Taste of Art. Food as Counterculture in Contemporary Practices. Fayettevile, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2017 (pp. 61-75).

 

“Kitchen Mishaps: Performances of Masculine Domesticity in American Comedy Films.” In Michelle Szabo (ed.), Food, Masculinity, and Home. London: Bloomsbury, 2017 (pp. 197-212).

 

“Geographical Indications, Intellectual Property and the Global Market.” In Sarah May, Katia Sidali, Achim Spiller, Bernhard Tschofen (eds.), Taste Power Tradition. Geographical Indications as Cultural Property. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2017 (pp. 13-24).

 

“Manning the Table: Masculinity and weight loss in U.S. commercials.” In Jonatan Leer and Klitgaard Povlsen (eds.), Food and Media: Practices, Distinctions and Heterotopias. London: Ashgate, 2016 (pp. 95-109).

 

“La cucina italiana vista dagli stranieri.” In Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari (eds.), Cultura del cibo vol III: L’Italia del Cibo, Torino: UTET, 2015 (pp. 467-474).

 

“Food, Identity, and Cultural Reproduction in Immigrant Communities.” Social Research vol. 81 no. 2 (2014): 417-442.

 

“Representations of Caribbean Food in US Popular Culture.” In Wiebke Beushausen, Anne Brüske, Ana-Sofia Commichau, Patrick Helber, Sinah Kloss (eds.), Caribbean Food Cultures: Representations and Performances of Eating, Drinking and Consumption in the Caribbean and Its Diasporas. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014 (pp. 133-150).

 

“We are Family: Ethnic Food Marketing and the Consumption of Authenticity in Italian-Themed Chain Restaurants.” In Simone Cinotto (ed.), Making Italian America: Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities (Critical Studies in Italian America Series). New York: Fordham University Press, 2014 (pp. 244-301).

 

“Food and Popular Culture.” In Paul Freedman, Joyce Chaplin, and Ken Albala (eds.), Food in Time and Place: The American Historical Association Companion to Food History. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014 (pp. 322-339).

 

“Costa Rica between trademarks and geographical indications: A case study in the development of tipicality.” In Giovanni Magagnoli et al. (eds.), La Tipicita’ nella Storia. Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2013 (pp.165-174).

 

“Food, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.” In Ken Albala (ed.), Routledge Handbook to Food Studies. New York: Routledge, 2012 (pp. 274-281).

 

“World Developments”, in Antiquity, vol. 1 of A Cultural History of Food. Berg: Oxford 2012 (pp.181-192).

 

“World Developments”, in The Medieval Age, vol. 2 of A Cultural History of Food. Berg: Oxford 2012 (pp. 165-180).

 

“World Developments”, in The Renaissance, vol. 3 of A Cultural History of Food. Berg, Oxford 2012 (pp. 183-194).

 

“World Developments”, in The Age of Enlightenment, vol. 4 of A Cultural History of Food. Berg: Oxford 2012 (pp. 185-199).

 

“World Developments”, in The Age of Empire, vol. 5 of A Cultural History of Food. Berg: Oxford 2012 (pp. 199-208).

 

“World Developments”, in The Modern Age, vol. 6 of A Cultural History of Food. Berg: Oxford 2012 (pp.201-210).

 

“Eat your way through culture: Gastronomic tourism as performance and body experience.” With Paulo de Abreu e Lima. In Simone Fullagar, Kevin Markwell, and Erica Wilson, eds. Slow Mobilities: Experiencing Slow Travel and Tourism. Bristol: Channel View Publications 2012 (pp. 69-83).

 

“Looking at Men’s Tables: Food and Masculinities in Blockbuster Movies.” In Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, Lynn M. Walters (Eds.). Food as Communication/Communication as Food. New York: Peter Lang 2011 (pp. 155-175).

 

“New York et la nouvelle scène gastronomique” (New York and the New Food Scene) in Voyages en Gastronomies. Julia Czergo and Jean-Pierre Lemasson, eds. Paris: Autrement 2008 (pp. 162-173).

 

“The Chefs, The Entrepreneurs, and Their Patrons: The Avant Garde Food Scene in New York City” in Gastropolis: Food and New York City. Annie Hawk-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch, eds. New York: Columbia University Press 2008 (pp. 116-131).

 

“Hungry Engrams: Food and Non-Representational Memory”, in Food and Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell 2007 (pp. 102-114)

 

“Identity, Diversity, and Dialogue”, in Food: Identity and Diversity in Culinary Cultures of Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe 2005 (pp.11-37).

 

“Low-carb Dieting and the Mirror: A Lacanian Analysis of the Atkins Diet”, in The Atkins Diet and Philosopy. Chicago: Open Court 2005 (pp.196-212).

 

 

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

 

“Food” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Modern World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2018), pp. 234-239.

 

“Gender” in Darra Goldstein, ed. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

 

“Food Culture in Italy” in Ken Albala, ed. Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia Westport CT: ABC-CLIO/Greenwood 2012.

 

“Slow Food” and “European Union” in The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries, ed. Gary Allen and Ken Albala, Westport CT: Greenwood Press 2007.

 

 

 

OTHER ESSAYS

 

“Ai confine fra cibo e cinema.” Wired Italia, September 2107.

 

“A Taste of Empire.” Tank Magazine, vol.8 no. 9, fall 2016, 38-43.

 

“La tavola come paesaggio: le dimensioni del gusto giapponese” (The table as a landscape: dimensions of Japanese taste), Introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition “L’estetica del sapore: un’arte giapponese” (The aesthetics of taste: a Japanese art), Japanese Culture Institute, Rome, February 17th-March 31st 2006.

 

“Chinese Foodways in Italy”, in Flavor and Fortune, vol. 12 no. 2, summer 2005.

 

“Il Triangolo d’oro: da regno della droga a crocevia geopolitico“ (The Golden Triangle: From Kingdom of Drugs to Geopolitical Crossroads), Limes – La rivista Italiana di Geoplitica vol 3 no. 1 (1995).

 

 

INVITED BOOK REVIEWS

 

Food Democracy: Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Design and Art, Oliver Vodeb (ed.) International Journal of Food Design 3:1 (2018)

 

Simone Cinotto. The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City. Gastronomica vol. 14 no. 4 (2014): 93

 

John Dickie, Delizia!: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food (New York: Free Press, 2008); David Gentilcore, Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); John F. Mariani. How Italian Food Conquered the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) in Italian American Review vol. 2 no. 1 (2012): 41-43

 

Martin Bruegel, ed. Profusion et Plenurie (Tours: Presse Universitaire François Rabelais, 2009) in Food Culture & Society vol. 13 no. 4 (2010) : 613-616

 

Geoff Andrews. Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. 2008) in Gastronomica vol. 9 no. 4 (2009): 109-110

 

Peter J. Atkins, Peter Kummel, and Derek J. Oddy, eds. Food and the City in Europe since 1800 (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007) in Gastronomica vol. 9 no.2 (2009). 104-105

 

Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity (London: Reaktion Books 2007) in Food & Foodways vol.15 no.1-3 (2005): 1-3

 

Ferran Adrià, Juli Soler, and Albert Adrià, El Bulli 1998-2002 (Barcelona: El Bulli books, 2002) in Food, Culture & Society, vol. 7 no. 2 (2007): 160-162

 

Miguel Sanchez Romera, La Cocina de los Sentidos (Barcelona, Planeta 2001) in Gastronomica vol.3 no.1 (2003): 110-11