Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here.
Photo: Library of Congress
I have always had an impulse to record my world. Hand-written letters are my favorite birthday present (for myself and others). My emails go on and on, full of emotion and detail. I jot descriptions of everything happening around me whenever I find myself sitting still with a few minutes to spare.
I’ve felt this need since I was a kid, but the intent behind it has subtly changed since I have taken up historical work over the past five years.
Now, it is just these kinds of records, from people of times past, that I conceive of as the ultimate treasure, the jackpot.
I can find thousands of pages describing how the industrial canners or home economists of the early 20th century thought about canned food. It’s easy to find journalistic or scientific accounts of food poisoning. And yet, what’s so much more difficult (near impossible!) to find is the letter of the Arkansas farmwife in which she recounts her... Read more
