Hello, Welcome!
foodstuff is a twice monthly newsletter the wades through the cultural, political, environmental, and emotional entanglements that food elicits. Here, we will consider the messy ways that food media and the food industry perpetuate harm through diet culture, capitalism, colonialism, and environmental destruction, often simultaneously. At the same time, we will embrace the joyful, nourishing, deeply felt, and collaborative possibilities that thinking with food offers!
On the 1st of each month expect an essay and recording on a specific food related topic.
On the 15th of each month expect a plant-centred recipe.
Why subscribe?
When you subscribe, you invite me into your inbox! I take this super seriously and promise not to crowd your space. Please know that you are always welcome to unsubscribe at any time, no hard feelings.
Each issue will cover a different topic but will always include a critical reflection from me, as well as food-related reading, watching, and listening recommendations. I promise to link free resources whenever possible!
I want this to be a collaborative space, so having you here, subscribing, reading, commenting on, and engaging with this work means a lot! Thank you!
Who am I?
I’m Melissa! My pronouns are she/her and I am a PhD candidate at McMaster University in the Department of English and Cultural Studies. I’m second generation Italian-Canadian based in Hamilton, Ontario, on the lands covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum agreement. My doctoral research is on food literature (rice, to be specific) and settler colonial capitalism.
Photo by sarah bodri
In the fall of 2021 I taught an undergraduate course in Popular Culture at McMaster University that focused specifically on food in media and popular culture. To keep in touch with students, and to keep conversations going, I started a variation of this newsletter. One of the most important lessons my students taught me (that I don’t think they know that they taught me) was just how generative sharing work-in-progress can be! Again and again they shared their ideas with me and with each other, offered and accepted feedback bravely, and tried again. With foodstuff I’m taking a page from their books.
foodstuff will intersect with some of my dissertation work but will also, I hope, contribute to the exciting public-facing scholarship that is already happening around food media and culture!
