The inaugural issue includes poetry on a peach and an essay in favor of convenience foods, as well as an art historian's research on letter cookies in 17th-century Dutch still lifes and a seriously convoluted deconstruction of a postmodern menu. This bewildering mix is a suitable representation of the state of the Food Studies Movement. Indeed, diversity may be the new discipline's draw, as scholars studying food seek a haven from their own department's indifference. As students become aware of the possibilities in food studies, individual courses, scattered throughout the course catalog in literature or anthropology or agriculture, fill up as quickly as they appear. Outside the ivory tower, consumer magazines such as Saveur are cultivating a certain socioculinary tone, bringing elements of food studies to the masses that don't always know what they're eating, says Gastronomica editor Darra Goldstein.
People have a lot of familiarity with it.
We can order pad thai and things we like. We know something and that is good, but it isn't necessarily a deep knowledge. Barbara Haber, curator of books at the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, knows from her reshelving carts that food studies are alive and well. The library is actually dedicated to women's history and women's studies, but it's the culinary collection, containing over 16,000 volumes, that is the real magnet for the public. Even Martha Stewart showed up recently to film a segment at the library, which has been a repository for cookbooks since its beginnings in 1943.