Scoot on over to Anthropology News to check out my newest photo essay, featuring Polaroid photographs I took at Christmas markets in Germany in December, 2023. Each photo features a food from the market, but some of the photos are of vegan foods, and some of foods made with meat and other animal products. Can…
Category: Art
How to Prevent Recipe Theft: A Conference Zine
I have just returned from AAA in Toronto, the annual and massive anthropology conference, and I am feeling very happy to be an anthropologist. I met up with old friends, made new ones, ate well with all the food scholars, and presented a paper to six very brave and not-even-too-bleary-eyed attendees at an 8am Saturday…
Artist as Author: Reflections on Jeff Koons’ Talk at IU
In my research on recipes, I’m often engaged in discussions of authorship and ownership. Who can be called an ‘author’ of a recipe? What does authorship of a text entail (in terms of copyright law or social norms) and who gets to be an author when freshly published recipes are based on older recipes or…
Petty Aunts and Stolen Broccoli
Who owns a recipe? How do you know? Does it matter? The answers to these questions are not absolute or universal, but rather rooted in beliefs about skill, expertise, knowledge, and the value of food and cooking. Consider how the characters in this absurdly catchy (and recently viral) TikTok music video would respond to the…
Pizza Sweater
My master’s thesis in Boston University’s Gastronomy program was on the subject of Food as a Response to Trauma. I studied the roles food could play in trauma recovery by speaking with practitioners, and by reflecting on the food that played a part in my own trauma recovery. Food is extremely effective in modulating emotion,…
Ariana Gunderson 