A History of Activism through Cookbooks (Online)
Taught by Sarah Lohman
Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian and the author of the bestselling books Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods and Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She focuses on the history of food as a way to access the stories of diverse Americans. Endangered Eating was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon’s Editors, Food & Wine, and Adam Gopnik on the Milk Street podcast. It was a finalist for the Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship and winner of the Ohioana Library Book Prize for Nonfiction. Lohman’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR. Lohman has lectured across the country, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to The Culinary Historians of Southern California
Food has often been a way for activist communities to fundraise, connect, and spread the word about their cause.
We'll look at the origins of the link between food and activism with the abolitionist food writers of the Civil War. We'll unpack suffrage cookbooks from the turn of the 20th century and the earliest LGBTQ cooking pamphlets from the 1906s. Finally, we'll analyze the People's Cookbook of Philadelphia, a community of organizers depicted through recipes. Lastly, we'll talk about how food is still used to connect and advocate for causes to this day.
