Student Work Highlight – Athena Anderson
Historical Analysis of Education About Native Pollinators for Farmers in Western North Carolina
Written by: Athena Anderson
Pollinators make the majority of our fruit and vegetable crops possible by facilitating reproduction in flowering plants. There are thousands of native pollinators in the U.S., but our agricultural system has become dependent upon the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), a non-native species. Honeybees have little immunity to native pathogens and suffer stress from intensive commercial management practices. Beekeepers struggle to maintain their hives and predictions abound of a coming national agricultural crisis as a result of honeybee decline. Native pollinators can provide all necessary pollination services to ensure sustainable crop production, given the right conditions. Conservation of native pollinators on cropland could improve food security and buffer our national food system against honeybee loss. More
Updates in the Wine Department
The Wine Studies Curriculum
All students, including those already in the industry, will benefit from the expertise of instructors Jacquelyn Groeper and Ara Sarkissian.
- Fundamentals of Wine
- Comprehensive Survey of Wine: Europe
- Comprehensive Survey of Wine: The World
- Current Topics in Wine Studies
Offered through the Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center
The Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center was established in 1996 to promote the development of educational programs exploring all aspects of wine, including viticulture; enology; winemaking; wine history; economics; distribution and marketing; pairing with food; and the psychological, physiological, and cultural phenomena of wine consumption. The center also covers programs in beer and spirits.
Student Summer Symposium: Eric Lewis Donovan
From recipe testing, to ethnography, to archives, to even appetizers, our 2026 Student Summer Symposium showcases the many ways our students think, create, and write about food.
Mrs. Vazza's Meatballs
By Eric Lewis Donovan
Mrs. Vazza’s Meatballs was created for my Food & Visual Culture course. Through a family meatball recipe, the zine explores how food carries memory, identity, migration, and place across generations. The project challenged me to look beyond ingredients and recipes and consider food as a form of storytelling, revealing how family traditions become living archives of culture and belonging. Creating this piece deepened my understanding of visual storytelling and reinforced the idea that some of our most meaningful histories are preserved not in books, but around the table.
The zine centers on Mrs. Vazza’s meatballs, a family recipe that has been carried across generations and adapted by the women who preserved it. What began as a recipe became a way to explore food as inheritance—how traditions, memories, identities, and stories are passed down through kitchens and around tables. As someone who wasn’t born into the Vazza family but was welcomed into their traditions, I became interested in how food can create belonging and connection, and how recipes often preserve much more than ingredients. Ultimately, the meatballs became a lens through which to examine family, place, memory, and the quiet ways culture survives through everyday acts of cooking and sharing a meal.
Student Summer Symposium: Ruthie Collins
From recipe testing, to ethnography, to archives, to even appetizers, our 2026 Student Summer Symposium showcases the many ways our students think, create, and write about food.
Feminine Fire: Stirring the Pot, Shaping the World
By Ruthie Collins
Once upon a time, someone, somewhere, decided a woman’s place was in the kitchen. Said it like a curse . . . as if the worst thing a woman could be was barefoot while basting a turkey. But what if we reclaimed that phrase? What if, in 2026, a woman’s place is wherever she chooses to be, including the kitchen, not out of obligation, but from passion? What if we revisit women’s lib again and place ourselves in the kitchen because of our desire to immerse ourselves in the process of cooking and need for a creative outlet, and not because of a stereotype? When I cook, I am not performing a chore, I’m designing. The kitchen is where I go to remember who I am. It’s where I feel rooted and radiant. It’s where I can pour intuition, tenderness, and power into something tangible. And I actually like it there. There was a time when we fought so hard to get out of the kitchen, and now we’re finding ourselves ready to waltz back in with our heads held high, our knives sharp, and our playlists loud because we want to claim it as ours.
Red & Green: BU Class Inhabits Cultural and Culinary Tourism in New Mexico by José J. López Ganem
This course begins with a simple but layered question: why leisurely travel for food?
In a post-Bourdain world, what once felt like the “parts unknown” no longer exists in quite the same way. The places that Anthony Bourdain helped bring into view—once distant, unfamiliar, or outside the scope of mainstream travel—are now widely accessible, whether through long-distance travel or the screen of a smartphone. This expanded visibility invites social scientists to ask not only how and by whom the global food tourism industry is sustained, but also what it produces: its human and environmental impacts, its promises and contradictions, its legacies and claims of innovation. It also prompts reflection on the motivations that lead us to line up outside Cédric Grolet’s pâtisserie in Paris or spend generously on Māori honey from Aotearoa (New Zealand).
The origins of culinary tourism, however, are less straightforward than today’s digital enthusiasm might suggest. Folklorist Lucy Long framed it as a response to the opacity of modern food systems—or, at times, as a way of extracting culinary knowledge—traveling for food has not always followed the now-familiar cycle of travel, purchase, photograph, and post. Still, as a pioneering scholar in the field, Long argues the enduring promise of culinary tourism lies in its potential for engagement on equal flooring, where encounters through food can challenge and even dissolve perceived and artificial boundaries of otherness.
A Cheesy Trip to Vermont 🧀
I can't remember the last time that I went on a field trip. Sometimes, just the words themselves bring back for me memories of specially packed lunches, tightly packed schedules, and of course, a day off from school doing something slightly educational but often more fun than anything else.
So when I found out that I would be required to go on a field trip of cheesemaking facilities in Vermont for the Cheese Studies Program I was pretty excited. Mud Season, cows, rain boots, Ben & Jerry's run, and cheese? Sign me up! As a Berkshire county local myself, I'm no stranger to farms, animals, and dairy production. In fact, I think I might be one of the last people of my age who grew up getting milk delivered to my doorstep, but something that I hadn't thought much about before in the dairying production is cheesemaking.
A newer trend in the American food system, cheesemaking has been used by farmers in a plethora of ways to not only create a future for themselves and their farms but also for their surrounding community and homes. Let's be real, cheese is awesome. From a yummy bloomy rind to a smelly washed cheese to even my favorite car snack of plain old cheese curds, it comes in all shapes, sizes, and styles and fits just about every occasion. But have you ever stopped to think about the process that goes into making cheese or even the reasons behind why a cheese is the way it is? Historically in Europe, cheese style was (and still is!) all about region specificification--for example Parmigiano Reggiano and Taleggio are only ever made in Northern Italy. But the US is a little more laissez faire with cheese styles. In fact, it's not uncommon for many cheesemakers to make multiple styles of cheeses all at one site which really allows for a more experimental approach to cheesemaking.
Truffles & Trash: A Chat with Dr. Kelly Alexander
Last Thursday, April 2nd, the Food Studies Department welcomed Dr. Kelly Alexander from the University of North Carolina to talk to us about her new book, Truffles & Trash: Recirculating Food in a Social Welfare State. With a B.S.J. in Journalism from Northwestern University and an M.A. and PhD from Duke University, Dr. Alexander has spent much of her life thinking about the everyday value of food in various contexts across the world and cultures.
With the publication of her new book, Dr. Alexander took the time to talk to us about her field work in Brussels that focuses on how Belgium as a country and Brussels as the capital of Europe works to manage food waste and redistribute unsold yet edible food across the region. We all celebrated the accomplishment by eating a wonderful concoction of kitchen-scrap curry made from edible food items that were due to be thrown away.
"I started to think about what it meant to throw away imperfect foods," Dr. Alexander told us as she recounted her time working in the kitchen at La Truffe Noire in Brussels and the many perfectly edible pieces of spinach, mushrooms, and day-old bread. From there, the rest is history.
By working in food banks and other "scrappy" institutional and community endeavors such as urban markets and cafés, Dr. Alexander told us that she was able to better understand the way that people are able to access, use, and redefine food waste.
Interested to learn more? Consider picking up Dr. Alexander's new book! Truffles & Trash: Recirculating Food in a Social Welfare State
BU Giving Day 2026
April 8th is BU Giving Day!
In memory of our founder who died this year we are asking for donations to be made to the Rebecca Alssid Award.
Course Spotlight: Urban Agriculture, Summer 2026
Calling all urban agriculturists, plant parents, and green-seeking enthusiasts!
The BU Food Studies Department is excited to welcome Tuft's PhD candidate Olivia Grieco this summer to teach our Urban Agriculture class this summer. While perhaps not the first thought that comes to mind when we shop at our local supermarkets, but growing food in a urban context in itself is quite an interesting puzzle to think about. Where is food grown? How is it brought in? Is it shipped out? How do we as humans experience public green spaces when surrounded by the mass of concrete? Food for thought for sure!
What makes this course different from a typical environment or food studies class?
Olivia: The focus of this course is on exploratory learning. There will be major emphasis on hands-on learning and direct engagement with urban agriculture experts and practitioners. This will take students outside of the classroom and into their community and food system.
Sebastian Crissey’s Article in The Chronicle!
Check out the published work by one of our current graduate students, Sebastian Crissey.
In this ethnographic study, Sebastian Crissey traces the history of cooperative food retail in Willimantic, Connecticut, examining how community-owned grocery models of the 1970s shaped local food culture and consumer identity. Drawing on oral history and archival research, the piece offers a window into the grassroots economics of American food access.