Video
In a selection of talks and interviews, Fabio Parasecoli discusses on camera his research in food studies, food history, and food design, as well his work as a food writer.
Food: A Systemic Approach
Knowing where our food comes from is important to us as consumers and as citizens, allowing to make more careful choices. During this lecture I gave in Warsaw, Poland, I explore different conceptualizations of the global food system, together with the structures, flows, and stakeholders that compose it.
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Food and Film
In this talk I gave for the Sagan National Colloquium at Ohio Wesleyan University I explore the presence and meaning of food in film.
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Design in Global Brooklyn
What do the fashionable food hot spots of Cape Town, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv have in common? Despite all their differences, consumers in each major city are drawn to a similar atmosphere: rough wooden tables in postindustrial interiors lit by edison bulbs. There, they enjoy single-origin coffee, kombucha, and artisanal bread. This is ‘Global Brooklyn,’ a new transnational aesthetic regime of urban consumption. I discuss it in this short talk at the World Food Design Day 2021, organized by Fork.
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Italy in the Global Food System
On the occasion of the presentation of my book Food (MIT, 2019) at the NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò I examine how Italy and its culinary culture have become part of the global food system, and what that means for the future.
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Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy
Listen to this short chat with author Michele Scicolone about the history of food in Italy.
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Rice in Italian Food Culture
In this video (in English, with Polish subtitles), I explain the recipe for risotto and make it together with Jarek Walczyk, president of the Polish Chef Club, The video is introduced by Toruń University professor and food historian Jarosław Dumanowski. I also discuss how rice became part of Italian food traditions, with influences from the Arabs and the Spaniards.
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Italian Food Cultures and the Environment
In this video, shot at the University of Minnesota in September 23, 2015, I speak about food culture in Italy and its relationship with the environment in conversation with Dan Philippon, Associate Professor of English and co-convener of the IAS Environmental Humanities Collaborative.
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Gnocchi and the Columbian Exchange
In this video (in English, with Polish subtitles), I give the recipes of gnocchi and make it together with Jarek Walczyk, president of the Polish Chef Club, The video is introduced by Toruń University professor and food historian Jarosław Dumanowski. I also discuss how that dish is a symbol for the Columbian Exchange and of how new products from the New World, such as potatoes and tomatoes, became part of Italian food traditions.
Mediterranean Diet, Intangible Heritage and Sustainable Tourism
Can the traditions and and the food productions connected with the Mediterranean Diet – from agriculture to fisheries – be activated to establish sustainable forms of tourism? I discussed the topic in New York, on January 15, 2019, during the Italian Mediterranean Style: One-day symposium at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
Food Forward: A Geometry conversation
In an ongoing effort to stay current on today’s food landscape, Geometry sat down with me, to discuss the attitudes and behaviors that are shaping our eating and grocery shopping habits. Here are 5 key insights that came out of that conversation.
City Food: Street Food in Warsaw
In this video (you can see an update on the research project and Mateusz Halawa (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences) are conducting in Poland. Here I share some observations on street food in Polish cities, as part of the international research project City Food.
Click here to see the video
Food in a Korean Drama: Imagining North Korea in Crash Landing on You
In the Korean drama on Netlix, food is used to portray a fictional North Korea that arguably has not much to share with the real one but whose apparent function is to run a commentary on South Korean consumer culture. A lot has been written on Squid Game, the Korean...
Memories of Flavors: Negotiating the Past in post-Socialist Europe
The fall of the socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has created winners and losers. Most current political tensions in those countries are rooted in the uneven distribution of the benefits deriving from rapid political and economic changes. What one can...
Pushing from the Margins: Food in European High Culture
Food’s troubling connection with pleasure questions the primacy of the spiritual over matter, of intellect over emotions and sensations, of soul over body that has informed most of Western Culture. I have just finished reading Leonard Barkan’s new book The Hungry Eye:...
Scanning Old Slides: Memory and Technological Archaeology
Last summer I scanned the pictures I took when I was a journalist. Those fragments of past instants now float in the remote immateriality of a digital cloud. For that, they have acquired a new, different life. There I am, slurping a bowl of noodles. I am covered in...
How to cook tradition? Three interpretations of Polish food
What culinary tradition is and what it does is still up for grabs. In the post-Covid relaunch, three restaurateurs in northern Poland offer different takes on how to connect their current customers to the past. Fieldwork in Poland continues to be stimulating. Each...
Truly Texas Mexican: Food Heritage Across Borders
In the documentary, food becomes art activism, a way to stay healthy, happy, and connected to the land. Ingredients, dishes, objects, and techniques turn into tools to reclaim an identity that is constantly contested and put down. I have been following Adán Medrano’s...
Food Generations: Pierogi, Culinary Heritage, and Family Legacy in Poland
All pictures: courtesy of the Goethe-Institut This film on culinary heritage highlights the role cooking and eating together play in the survival of material and immaterial culture and in the development of an inclusive and porous sense of identity that is based on...
Visual Food Heritage: African American Cuisine and Netflix’s High on the Hog
How can food heritage be identified and safeguarded when the powerful and winners in history have conspired to erase it, or at least to discount its prominence? What’s the value of cuisine when it becomes a tangible symbol or resistance and ingenuity? These are some...
It’s a Long Time Coming: Top Chef and the African Diaspora Food
The debates about race and racism that have shaken the US may have started influencing food TV and the representations of world cuisines. Food TV won’t be able to keep itself much longer out of the debate about race and racism in America. A sign of what may be coming...
Listen to your Vegetables (and Eat your Parents!): ‘Waffles and Mochi’ on Netflix
The show, by the Obama's Higher Ground production company, assumes that its young viewers have already been exposed to quite a few culinary experiences or at least they are quite open to experimentation, unless the real audience is their foodie millennial parents....