Free class on American Culinary Innovators

While class began yesterday, you can still sign up. This class is conducted by Andy Smith who is a frequent speaker at Culinary Historians of Chicago.

Innovators of American Cuisine: A History of the Culinary Arts in the U.S.

The New School

Mar 24, 2014 to Apr 20, 2014
Cost per enrollment: Free

Full course description

This course, offered through The New School, is devoted to the life and work of distinguished culinary professionals of the recent past and present who have changed the way we eat and drink in the United States. We will examine the lives and legacies of food culture giants, Julia Child, James Beard, Judith Jones, and Henri Soulé. Some are well-known to the public, others less so, but they all have left a long-lasting mark on what and where Americans eat, how they cook, and even the way they think and talk about food.

Each unit focuses on one of the four innovators, drawing on panel discussions and interviews with food writers, researchers, and practitioners who knew them. Structured around notable figures we refer to as “culinary luminaries,” the course leans toward the past. This is not because we intend to create a canon establishing the most important contributors to the development of the food world in the U.S. Much research is developing in the field of culinary arts, which is emerging as a field worthy of attention not only from journalists and practitioners, but from authors and scholars. We could not fully understand the contributions of our four innovators without looking at the social and cultural contexts of their work. The video material dedicated to each of the four innovators will delve into these topics, shedding light on distinctive aspects of the U.S. food world at different points in time.

Julia Child, James Beard, Judith Jones, and Henri Soulé worked in fields ranging from media to catering, and from restaurants to publishing. Their diverse contributions hint at the complex dynamics that lead to the evolution of the food world, a world influenced by food producers, restaurateurs, marketers, opinion makers, food writers, and book editors, to mention just a few.

Why does the course focus on past innovators, rather than contemporary trends? Today’s culinary world is so dominated by the media and their news cycles that we tend to live in a compressed present, always looking for the next hot thing and creating celebrities to fuel the self-perpetuation of the industry. We seldom take the time to pause and look back. How did we get here? Was it always like this? America’s relationship with food is particularly interesting because many feel that until the late 1950s the high-end culinary world of the U.S. lived as a reflection of French haute cuisine and its approach to restaurants. What happened in that period that generated radical changes in the way Americans eat out and think of what constitutes good food?

We do not intend to set U.S. culinary arts as a model. Through the close examination of the American experience and the contributions of innovators to its gastronomy, we want to help you acquire critical tools you can adapt and use to explore your own food culture, wherever you are. This is an open and burgeoning field with much to observe and learn about. We hope this course will be only the first step in your own research.

Tweet
Image of Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith
Assistant Professor

Andrew F. Smith is a writer and lecturer on food and culinary history and a faculty member of the Food Studies program at The New School in New York City. He curates The New School’s popular public lecture series Culinary Luminaries. Smith introduces most of the units in Innovators of American Cuisine, a course based on the lecture series.

Andrew F. Smith serves as the general editor for the Edible Series, published by Reaktion Press, and has edited or written more than 20 books, including The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America; Junk Food and Fast Food: The Food We Love to Eat; Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War; Drinking History: 15 Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages; American Tuna: The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food: and New York City: A Food Biography.

Guest panelists include Ariane Batterberry, co-founder of Food & Wine magazine; Mitchell Davis, vice president of the James Beard Foundation; William Grimes, New York Times columnist; Judith Jones, author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, who published Julia Child’s first book in 1961 and served as her editor afterward; Michael Nischan, founder and president of Wholesome Wave; Molly O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food columnist and author of the New York Cookbook; and Joe Randall, a chef and the chair of the Edna Lewis Foundation.


Andrew Smith
Assistant Professor

Andrew F. Smith is a writer and lecturer on food and culinary history and a faculty member of the Food Studies program at The New School in New York City. He curates The New School’s popular public lecture series Culinary Luminaries. Smith introduces most of the units in Innovators of American Cuisine, a course based on the lecture series.

Andrew F. Smith serves as the general editor for the Edible Series, published by Reaktion Press, and has edited or written more than 20 books, including The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America; Junk Food and Fast Food: The Food We Love to Eat; Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War; Drinking History: 15 Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages; American Tuna: The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food: and New York City: A Food Biography.

Guest panelists include Ariane Batterberry, co-founder of Food & Wine magazine; Mitchell Davis, vice president of the James Beard Foundation; William Grimes, New York Times columnist; Judith Jones, author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, who published Julia Child’s first book in 1961 and served as her editor afterward; Michael Nischan, founder and president of Wholesome Wave; Molly O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food columnist and author of the New York Cookbook; and Joe Randall, a chef and the chair of the Edna Lewis Foundation.

© 2014 Instructure
About Us Terms of Use Privacy Polic