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All right.

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So, my name is Joshua Lopez.

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I'm here with Doctor Lisa Heldke.

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And today we're going to be talking

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about the Association
for the Study of Food and Society.

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It is, April 9th, 2025.

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I'm here in my little office
in North Texas.

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Lisa, where are you

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joining us from?

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Hi

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Joshua, thanks so much for,

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in inviting me to this interview.

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I'm coming to you today from my office,
also in Saint Peter, Minnesota,

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where I teach at Gustavus
Adolphus College.

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So the this interview,
the purpose of it is,

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to celebrate the ASFS's, 
40th anniversary.

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So, as part of this celebration, we wanted
to chronicle the history of the ASFS

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as an organization and reflect on its
role in the broader field of food studies.

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So, as part of this effort,
we're conducting the

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these video interviews
with esteemed individuals like yourself,

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to gather insights
about ASFS's past, present and future.

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So, it's just to start off,

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you could talk about

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a little bit about yourself,

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where you did your formal studies?

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Where have you done
most of your teaching and research?

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And then what brought you specifically
to the topic of food studies?

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Sure. Great.

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Well, first,
before I go into any of that, it's

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so exciting to imagine
that ASFS is 40 years old.

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I sure haven't been here
from the beginning, but it's it's amazing

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to think of the organization
having that longevity now.

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So, I'm a philosopher by discipline,
and indeed

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I am in a philosophy department
here at Gustavus.

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While I sometimes get to teach food

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related classes, that's certainly a

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a tiny slice of what I do.

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I studied at Gustavus as
an undergraduate, and then I did my dis

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my PhD work at Northwestern University

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in Evanston, Illinois,
where I did a dissertation about a very,

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conventional

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topic in philosophy,
the nature of objectivity.

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And in the course of that dissertation,
at the end of it,

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I offered, kind of a homespun analogy,
I guess, in

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which I suggested that my dissertation
was kind of like a recipe book.

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It wasn't so much a rule
for how you had to do inquiry,

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but rather

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it was a kind of a set of suggestions
with some sort of limitations like, well,

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if you do this well, you can't
you can't predict what's going to happen.

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And a friend of mine at the time said,

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you know,
that's a really interesting analogy.

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You should maybe think
about writing that up as a paper.

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And so one of my very first academic
publications

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was a paper
called Recipes for Theory Making.

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And this was in about,
I don't know, 1987 maybe

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and let's and then I tried to get a job
using that paper.

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I would go around
and give that as a job talk.

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And let me just say that in 1987,

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that was a very, very terrible idea.

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Philosophers were not at all

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interested in thinking about recipes
as a form of inquiry in 1987.

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Indeed, they weren't interested

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in thinking about food
or agriculture whatsoever.

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For one single, solitary minute.

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So I,

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I came to,

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the study of food sort of through that,

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that a little bit that back door,

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my first couple of years of teaching
were at another small

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liberal arts college, Carleton College,
where I was in a temporary job

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and then I was offered
an, another temporary

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job at my alma mater
where I, where I currently teach.

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And when I got here, it turns out
that one of my other colleagues,

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a man named Deane Curtin,
had just gotten back from Japan and

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while he was in Japan, had had a number
of sort of revelatory food experiences.

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And we started talking with each other
about, gosh, you know,

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there seems to be something here about
this whole food and philosophy thing.

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And so we, decided, you know,

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we should try to produce a book.

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And we wanted to do something quickly,

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and sort of get some ideas out there

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into the, atmosphere so that they would
start getting talked about.

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So, we decided the way to do
that would be to put together an anthology

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of already published works,

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with some long introductions
by each of us to each of the sections.

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And so over the course of
I guess it was probably a couple of years,

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we put together this anthology,
which ended up having the title

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Cooking, Eating, Thinking, Transformative

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Philosophies of Food. And,

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that came out in I think about 1992.

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And so that was sort of,

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our little footprint on the territory,
if you will, of saying this is

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this is what we think philosophers could
be exploring if they took food, seriously.

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And that question, you know what?

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What could philosophy be like
if we took food

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seriously has been one of the questions

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that's really shaped a lot of the work
that I've done since then.

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So, my career has since 1990,

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I guess 1989, been at 1988,

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then at Gustavus Adolphus College,
where I've been primarily a philosopher.

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My life has been richer and fuller since,

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during the pandemic,
our science building was

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remodeled and doubled in size
and one of the additions that they made,

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and I like to believe
that I was a driving force behind it,

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reaching completion is that

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we now have a teaching kitchen on campus.

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It can accommodate, 12 people
very comfortably.

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16 if you don't mind being a little bit
cozy at four separate stations.

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And it means that I can teach
philosophy of food classes

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when when the space opens up,
I can teach a philosophy of food class

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where we actually cook,
which is really, really exciting.

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Yeah,

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There's there's so much I, I'm excited to

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learn more about that experience.

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And, and I guess my first question,
thinking about how you teach in,

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in like you mentioned a traditional,
you know,

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philosophy department.

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What has been your experience,

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in trying to legitimate the study of food

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in, in a traditional discipline
like philosophy?

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And then,

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in your courses,

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I'm imagining you may teach
introductory philosophy classes.

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What are some ways that you introduce

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students
to thinking about food in that context?

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Yeah.

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So, in terms of my very own department,
which is something

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in the neighborhood of 4 or 5 people,
depending upon how you count.

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Historically,

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for many years,
I describe myself as the world's

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oldest junior colleague
because I was the last person hired.

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You know,

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I don't know, for 15 or more years,
I was still the junior colleague.

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And all of the people in the department
had been my teachers.

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So there was so that was,
you know, one way of being in the world.

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And everybody had a sort of hands off
attitude about each other's research.

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So, you know,

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as long as you were willing to
teach modern philosophy every semester,

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you could teach whatever or, you know,
you could research whatever

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crazy thing you wanted to,
and nobody was going to get in your face.

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Now, I would say, I'm in a department
where

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I'm the where I'm the I'm the, the grand dame.

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I'm the old lady, let's put it
that way of the department. And,

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and not only is my research accepted,

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but it's part of we have created
this really cool department

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where among my other colleagues,
one of them is really,

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he has created,

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a philosophy of battle rap.

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So he teaches

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he started teaching battle rap as a way
to introduce people to informal logic.

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And so now he teaches a class,
he teaches a course on battle rap.

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He teaches a course on freeform rap.

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So, he is
he is using, rap as one of the chief,

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vehicles, but also,
subjects of study of his philosophy.

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Another of my colleagues
works on philosophy and addiction.

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And so she is exploring,

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she's

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that's one of her chief, topics of study

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and also one of the ways
in which she approaches the discipline.

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Another colleague
is a philosopher of sport.

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And is also our tennis coach.

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And so our department is full of people
who say philosophy needs to be

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out there in the world.

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And so we not only
I feel not only accepted, but really,

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you know, if I'm not thinking hard enough
or working hard enough to think,

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what does it even mean to say that cooking

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can be used
as a form of philosophical inquiry,

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not just that, like you can explore
cooking philosophically,

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but that you ought to be trying
to do philosophy in the kitchen.

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They kind of are pushing me harder, right?

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Because, because that's
what they're all doing, right?

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They're really thinking
through these media.

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Tommie.

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My color.

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I'm sorry, John,
my colleague who does rap.

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He's not just,
you know, philosophizing about rap.

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He's philosophizing with rap.

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And so I feel like I gotta
I gotta keep up my game, I guess.

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Let's see you had it. Oh.

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What are some of the ways,
I've introduced food in my other classes?

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So, I will admit
that I'm not always as robust.

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Sometimes I probably sort of self
not censor, exactly,

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but I kind of keep it
a little bit more segregated than

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than it should be. And

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And you and you asking me
that question invites me to think into

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how to put it into more places.

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I will say
one of the things that I've been teaching

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for about the last five years
now is a class in esthetics,

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and in that class we always spend,

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a significant portion of time on food.

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Admittedly, one of the works
that I often turn to is a work,

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by Carolyn Korsmeyer.

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The title escapes me right now,

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but one of the pieces in it is called
Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting.

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And the book is a philosophy of disgust.

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And so it's when people think, oh,
we're going to study food.

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They don't usually think, oh,
we're going to study gross things.

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But that's really what we do is explore,

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disgusting food, which turns out to be
really, really interesting.

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I teach environmental philosophies.

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And there we always,

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emphasize, there's
always at least one portion of the class

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where we explore food.

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And then I do, on a fairly

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regular basis,
get to teach something like,

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we have these things
that are kind of capstone

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seminars for our general education.

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And then also seminars in our department.

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And there I almost always choose
a food related topic.

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And so, for instance, this coming fall,
I'm teaching a course on,

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well, I'm
going to call it the Ontology of Eating.

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And it's kind of an outgrowth of a book
that I'm about to

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that's about to be published.

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The that I've written.

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And, you know, I'm excited

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again,
I'm just excited to think more about

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how when my students
are in the kitchen, sort

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of floundering around
trying to figure out what they're doing,

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how are we doing philosophy
when we do that?

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But I want to give you one very concrete

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example of something
that's just tickling me right now.

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An illustration of,

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how I've invited students to

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think philosophically about food,

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in places where you might not expect it.

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So this semester, I every semester
I teach a course called Modern Philosophy,

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which students are excited about

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until they find out
what it's actually about the 18th century.

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Right.

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And then it's like, oh, that's
a different modern than we had in mind.

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So anyway, every student in that class

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is assigned a particular person
that they're in charge of.

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And they, they spend a semester
doing independent research on that person,

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and they ask questions in the voice
of that person, and they kind of embody

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that person in the room,
and it works well and not well.

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Depending upon the semester,
depending on the student.

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And I always ask
students for some particular

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thing.

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When I'm picking a philosopher for them,
I ask them, well you know

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do you have any particular interests
that I should try to take in take up?

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And this semester, one of my students
said, I'm really interested in Ireland,

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for a variety of reasons.

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00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:33,960
And could you find me an Irish woman
philosopher from the 18th century?

244
00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:36,760
And I was like, well,
I don't know, actually,

245
00:13:36,760 --> 00:13:39,920
but I did a little bit of digging,
and I learned, to my amazement,

246
00:13:39,920 --> 00:13:44,320
that Robert Boyle, the chemist, you know,
Boyle's Law of Gases, that Robert Boyle,

247
00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:48,480
had a sister
and of course, they were Irish,

248
00:13:48,480 --> 00:13:51,360
but it turns out they sort of lived
a lot of their life in England.

249
00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:54,160
Never mind,
they counted as Irish for this student.

250
00:13:55,280 --> 00:13:57,680
And this sister, was apparently

251
00:13:57,680 --> 00:14:01,760
very influential on Robert Boyle
and maybe helped him do his work.

252
00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:03,080
And of course, this is at a time

253
00:14:03,080 --> 00:14:07,320
in which the notion of science
as a practice is really being solidified.

254
00:14:07,320 --> 00:14:09,960
And there's still a lot of things
like alchemy and,

255
00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:12,840
you know, phases of the moon
and all that sort of stuff.

256
00:14:12,840 --> 00:14:15,400
Well, it turns out,

257
00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:18,000
Lady Ranelagh is her name.

258
00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:23,520
The one publication that we have from her
is this handwritten manuscript,

259
00:14:23,520 --> 00:14:29,360
written in a number of different hands,
called the Boyle Family Recipe Book.

260
00:14:29,920 --> 00:14:33,360
It's a collection of recipes,
and in it are clear

261
00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:36,360
are four
that are clearly from Lady Ranelagh.

262
00:14:36,520 --> 00:14:38,600
And almost all of the four

263
00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:42,120
have to do with some kind of medical,
you know, it's a recipe.

264
00:14:42,120 --> 00:14:45,120
It's described as a recipe, but
it's for a medical treatment, basically.

265
00:14:45,400 --> 00:14:49,200
And, it uses techniques, that are

266
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:52,840
that might be found in the laboratory
also.

267
00:14:52,840 --> 00:14:56,800
Well, so I said, you know, the students
said, well, this is what there is about

268
00:14:56,800 --> 00:15:00,280
her, you know, so how am I going to write
a final paper about this?

269
00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:04,360
So, I set her up with a there's
a collection of essays called something

270
00:15:04,360 --> 00:15:07,480
like a Philosophy of Recipes
or something like that.

271
00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:08,520
It's a recent book.

272
00:15:08,520 --> 00:15:09,600
I'm very sorry

273
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:13,600
that I don't remember the author
or the editor or the title of the book.

274
00:15:13,960 --> 00:15:15,840
Very recent book.

275
00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:18,520
That's a whole set of articles
by philosophers thinking about what

276
00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:19,600
in the world is a recipe.

277
00:15:19,600 --> 00:15:23,400
So, I handed it to the student and said,
you know, there's no doubt in my mind

278
00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:25,960
that you can do something philosophical
with this recipe book.

279
00:15:25,960 --> 00:15:28,200
Well, she's having the time of her life.

280
00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:31,280
It turns out very little scholarship
has been done on this manuscript.

281
00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:34,440
She's having to do things like she's got
she's got a digital

282
00:15:34,440 --> 00:15:38,440
copy of the actual physical text,
which is written in script.

283
00:15:38,640 --> 00:15:42,440
She has done the work
of writing out for herself these four,

284
00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:46,240
recipes, which are in script, you know,
and no one knows

285
00:15:46,240 --> 00:15:48,280
how to read script anymore. Right.

286
00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:52,760
And she's looking at her techniques
and comparing them to techniques that,

287
00:15:53,840 --> 00:15:56,480
that,
Boyle would have used in his laboratory.

288
00:15:56,480 --> 00:15:59,760
And the questions, it turns out,
that have really captivated her,

289
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:03,480
are philosophical questions
like what makes a recipe

290
00:16:03,760 --> 00:16:06,360
come into existence and cease to exist?

291
00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:09,800
Like, when does a recipe exist
and when does it stop existing?

292
00:16:09,920 --> 00:16:12,200
So, she's having a wonderful time.

293
00:16:12,200 --> 00:16:14,880
And, you know, as a philosopher,
it was really gratifying to me

294
00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:17,160
that that she didn't even blink
when I said, well,

295
00:16:17,160 --> 00:16:20,160
of course these recipes can be
philosophically interesting.

296
00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:22,200
She's and you know,

297
00:16:22,200 --> 00:16:25,920
I'm sure that there are modern philosophy
professors out there who are rolling

298
00:16:25,920 --> 00:16:29,840
their eyes at the notion that this is
somehow legitimate modern philosophy.

299
00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:31,680
But I don't have any question.

300
00:16:31,680 --> 00:16:33,960
She's asking all the kinds
of philosophical questions

301
00:16:33,960 --> 00:16:36,480
I could possibly want a student
to be asking.

302
00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:37,200
And, you know,

303
00:16:37,200 --> 00:16:40,680
I've I've fought frog marched her
through all this, all the standards.

304
00:16:41,160 --> 00:16:43,440
I know she's read Hume,
I know she's read Kant,

305
00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:46,200
I know she's read Descartes,
I know she knows all those dudes.

306
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:50,320
And I'm just tickled that this student
interested in Ireland has found this,

307
00:16:51,520 --> 00:16:54,000
you know, vastly under researched,

308
00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:56,880
you know, okay, maybe vastly under
research because she didn't write much.

309
00:16:56,880 --> 00:17:01,200
But this under-researched person who had
an influence on the history of chemistry

310
00:17:01,440 --> 00:17:04,440
is now getting a little bit of attention
from this undergraduate student.

311
00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:06,840
So long story, but it just tickles me.

312
00:17:06,840 --> 00:17:09,520
This afternoon, I'm
going to a poster presentation

313
00:17:09,520 --> 00:17:11,760
where she's going to be
one of the students presenting her work.

314
00:17:11,760 --> 00:17:13,680
And I'm I'm excited to see

315
00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:17,560
how her work will be received
by, teachers and other students so.

316
00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,840
That sounds really exciting.

317
00:17:20,840 --> 00:17:25,760
And I just hearing that story
made me remember my own experience

318
00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:27,640
coming to food.

319
00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:30,640
And it made me think of this question.

320
00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:34,840
You know, right now I think there's
a larger body of food studies work.

321
00:17:35,280 --> 00:17:38,880
That could be pointed to
and students can be introduced to

322
00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:40,040
food studies in that way.

323
00:17:40,040 --> 00:17:41,920
But I, I'm thinking for

324
00:17:41,920 --> 00:17:45,400
maybe many people who are coming up
as food studies was emerging,

325
00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:49,680
and really didn't have like
a cohesive body of work to point that.

326
00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:53,880
I'm wondering
what were some sources or writings

327
00:17:53,880 --> 00:17:57,720
that when you read of maybe a reference
to food or something, like it's just

328
00:17:57,720 --> 00:18:00,880
something maybe clicked in your inspired
you to pursue

329
00:18:00,880 --> 00:18:03,880
that inquiry more into food?

330
00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:06,480
Yeah,
that's a really interesting question.

331
00:18:06,480 --> 00:18:11,240
When I did that anthology,
I was still a graduate student.

332
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:12,160
I'm sorry.

333
00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:15,640
No, I wasn't still a graduate student,
but I still had reasons to be going back

334
00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:19,160
to my old,
graduate institution, Northwestern.

335
00:18:19,680 --> 00:18:22,720
And Northwestern's library is,

336
00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:27,800
three separate towers.

337
00:18:27,800 --> 00:18:28,520
I can't remember.

338
00:18:28,520 --> 00:18:33,440
They were like, maybe three
or maybe four stories tall, each of them.

339
00:18:34,040 --> 00:18:36,960
And they are,

340
00:18:36,960 --> 00:18:39,960
they still I think they still use
the Dewey Decimal System,

341
00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:42,960
which always struck me
as amusing for a university library.

342
00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:46,560
But anyway, each of the,
you know, each floor

343
00:18:46,560 --> 00:18:50,040
in each tower
represented one decimal letter.

344
00:18:51,520 --> 00:18:52,800
And so I was

345
00:18:52,800 --> 00:18:55,800
doing research for this anthology,

346
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:58,040
while there and I,

347
00:18:58,040 --> 00:19:01,440
I'm sure I guess this would have been card
catalogs, right.

348
00:19:01,440 --> 00:19:02,000
Yeah.

349
00:19:02,000 --> 00:19:05,880
And so I was trying to find anything
that might

350
00:19:06,120 --> 00:19:09,120
somehow be

351
00:19:09,840 --> 00:19:10,680
relevant.

352
00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:14,080
And so, you know, you you would just
I mean, there was no Googling,

353
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:18,480
you would

354
00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:21,480
get a suggestion from somebody
or you would do the old,

355
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:25,320
breadcrumb method
of looking at the footnotes from the thing

356
00:19:25,320 --> 00:19:27,240
that you were looking at at that time.

357
00:19:27,240 --> 00:19:31,560
But I just distinctly remember that
the project that we were doing

358
00:19:31,560 --> 00:19:36,880
required me to go to every single floor
of every single tower in that library,

359
00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:41,520
which to me was very symbolic of the ways
in which food

360
00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:46,680
is cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary, you name it.

361
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:49,320
If you think about food, you can study.

362
00:19:49,320 --> 00:19:52,680
You really can study
everything that there is to be studied.

363
00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:58,320
And we were, you know, honestly, when I look at look back at that anthology, which,

364
00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:02,720
blessed it's still in print

365
00:20:02,720 --> 00:20:05,720
and it still gets used in classes.

366
00:20:07,200 --> 00:20:09,640
It, it

367
00:20:09,640 --> 00:20:13,800
it includes some really crazy pieces,
you know, included,

368
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:19,280
a little tiny excerpt
by a guy named Patrick Suppes

369
00:20:19,280 --> 00:20:22,280
in which he took a recipe
for something like

370
00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:25,520
a, from a Chinese cookbook.

371
00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:28,680
Red chicken, red roasted chicken.

372
00:20:28,680 --> 00:20:31,680
I don't remember the specific name of it
now, but at any rate, he,

373
00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:37,320
an analytic philosopher, unpacked
that recipe using sort of, conceptual

374
00:20:37,320 --> 00:20:40,960
analysis techniques that would be familiar
to any analytic philosopher.

375
00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:45,120
And we were just, you know, thunderstruck
that a philosopher would happen to,

376
00:20:46,280 --> 00:20:49,040
choose a food example
because it was very unusual.

377
00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:53,600
We included, a piece from the Minneapolis
Star Tribune,

378
00:20:54,440 --> 00:20:57,440
food critic at the time,
a guy named Al Sicherman,

379
00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:01,920
who had tried to find out
how I think it was Burger King,

380
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:05,760
created pie slices
that had such a clean, sharp edge.

381
00:21:06,520 --> 00:21:07,440
And the answer was

382
00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:10,480
it was a trade secret,
and no one could reveal anything about it.

383
00:21:11,400 --> 00:21:13,120
We had some poetry.

384
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:18,080
We included,

385
00:21:18,080 --> 00:21:22,520
texts from, ancient religious sources.

386
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:27,240
And I think we had a lot of criteria
that just sent us anywhere

387
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:31,520
trying to find anything
that might possibly

388
00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:34,840
address food somehow.

389
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:38,720
And, you know, in a way,
I'm glad that the internet hadn't been,

390
00:21:39,840 --> 00:21:42,760
developed to the point
where we could do a Google search

391
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:46,240
because it would make the task
just insurmountable.

392
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,920
At the time we were, we sort of grabbed
what we could and said, gosh,

393
00:21:49,920 --> 00:21:53,640
what if we actually paid attention
to the fact that food is mentioned here?

394
00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:57,200
What what would we notice?

395
00:21:57,200 --> 00:21:59,760
And that's one of the things that I did.

396
00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:01,680
For a while,

397
00:22:01,680 --> 00:22:04,800
almost exclusively, I had this idea
that I was going to do a work

398
00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:08,760
that tried to find where Western
philosophers had talked about food.

399
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:11,480
Wherever they had done

400
00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:14,480
so and really tried to,

401
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:20,240
highlight those, those passages.

402
00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:23,240
And then I realized
I was no historian of philosophy.

403
00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:25,560
I'm not a very good
historian of philosophy at all,

404
00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:28,160
and that was a task
for someone else altogether.

405
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:31,800
But it was the case
that as we were starting out,

406
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:32,520
we would sort of say,

407
00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:36,120
oh my gosh, remember that passage
at the beginning of Plato's Republic

408
00:22:36,600 --> 00:22:40,240
where he talks about, oh, you know,
we're all going to sit around and eat

409
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:44,520
acorns and berries
and, and drink wine and,

410
00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:47,920
roasted, we'll eat roasted figs.

411
00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:51,120
And, you know, the response is, oh,
you want to live in a city of pigs?

412
00:22:51,200 --> 00:22:54,800
And then the then Socrates says, oh,
so you want meat?

413
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,040
Well, then
we're going to have to have more land.

414
00:22:57,040 --> 00:22:59,640
And you know what
that means? It's going to be war.

415
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:01,240
And you think, wow,

416
00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:04,000
no one talks about the

417
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:08,560
fact that the start of war

418
00:23:08,640 --> 00:23:12,360
and the that sort of launches
the whole question about justice in

419
00:23:12,360 --> 00:23:16,720
the Republic is a question about
whether you're going to have meat or not.

420
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:20,480
And so so I guess this is all to say,

421
00:23:21,240 --> 00:23:25,640
when you look at those isolated passages
about food,

422
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:29,520
it leads you to, as we said,
a lot in the 90s, read against,

423
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,920
read across the text in a really,
really different way.

424
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:34,200
I'm not sure.

425
00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:38,400
Did I skate across the question in
answering that Joshua, or did I answer it?

426
00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:43,480
No, I think so, and I love the image
that you created about

427
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:48,560
the librarian having to go through
all of those different levels to search.

428
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,520
And yeah, I think that really does paint
a really great picture

429
00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:57,200
of just even thinking about
where can we find references to food

430
00:23:57,200 --> 00:23:58,200
and what what they mean.

431
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:00,840
And they're kind of everywhere, right.

432
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:02,240
Yes. Yes.

433
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,320
And, you know, this is a contrast to that.

434
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,360
And it's not relevant exactly.

435
00:24:07,360 --> 00:24:09,560
But I, I mention it because it's been

436
00:24:10,840 --> 00:24:13,520
it's been really,

437
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:16,640
paining me, I guess, lately
or for a while.

438
00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:18,840
So, I teach at a liberal arts college.

439
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,720
We about everything 2 to 10 years.

440
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:25,920
We revisit the curriculum and say,
are we achieving the goals that we have

441
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:30,240
of really giving our students,
a broad education in the liberal arts?

442
00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:30,840
We don't go

443
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,560
you know, deep so much as we go broad.

444
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:39,080
And, what I say to my students, anytime
I do a philosophy of food class or anytime

445
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:43,000
I do esthetics actually
is, we really pride ourselves

446
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:47,280
on helping you to use all of your senses
to explore the world.

447
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,560
Except for two of them. Right.

448
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:54,600
And you could graduate from Gustavus
or any other liberal arts college, really,

449
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:59,200
without ever being asked
to pay one little scrap of attention

450
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:01,120
to your nose and mouth.

451
00:25:01,120 --> 00:25:03,880
And my geology friend
here will always say, well, actually,

452
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:05,600
there are a couple of tests in geology

453
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:07,760
where you have to lick the rocks,
except post-Covid

454
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:09,480
they don't even get to lick
the rocks anymore.

455
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:13,480
They have to ask the professor
what would happen if they licked the rock.

456
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:17,760
But other than that one test
and you know, other than yes, there

457
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:23,520
there are, isolated classes in nutrition
and some disciplines and so on.

458
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:24,560
But for the most part,

459
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,560
no one ever asks you to pay
any attention to your nose and mouth.

460
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:30,720
So, it's just interesting to me
that, that a substance

461
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:33,840
that's central to what it is
to be a human in

462
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:38,000
any sense of the word you might want to
choose is nevertheless

463
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:43,560
so marginalized in our discipline, less
so all the time, I have to say.

464
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:45,720
I mean, sometimes now I think,
why is it that

465
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:49,000
we don't have a food studies major,
or at least a minor here at Gustavus?

466
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:51,440
Because we have classes

467
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:54,440
in, you know, political science
and in the languages and in,

468
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:58,120
there's a chemistry of cooking class,
you know, so

469
00:25:58,120 --> 00:26:01,120
that's been a that's been a real change.

470
00:26:01,120 --> 00:26:04,480
But still, you could skitter
through the college without ever

471
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,440
paying attention to your mouth.

472
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:09,600
Yeah,

473
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:13,200
I, I'm teaching us food history
this semester.

474
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,800
And, when we were talking
about domestic scientists,

475
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:18,320
I actually brought a perfection salad.

476
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:20,640
I made one at home.

477
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:22,320
And for students, like they.

478
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:26,200
At first I, I had to say, like, we're
not just tasting it because it's fun.

479
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,280
Like, I really want you to think about
what taste,

480
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:32,520
the taste of this dish tells

481
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:35,520
you about history and change over time.

482
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:39,040
And, of course, I'm not sure
if you've ever tried a perfection salad,

483
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:42,680
but everyone in class did not like it.

484
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:46,080
There was a consensus that it was gross
and it was too sour.

485
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:49,200
But then having to tell them like
this was a popular

486
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:51,960
dish at one point, like,
what does that tell you?

487
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:57,000
And then I think students at that time,
finally, as class was ending,

488
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:00,280
started to make really good links
between learning

489
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:04,040
and the senses
and asking that very question

490
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,360
that you asked how can we,
how come we don't think with our taste buds

491
00:27:07,360 --> 00:27:10,360
sometimes,
and what that might shed light on?

492
00:27:10,360 --> 00:27:12,960
Yes, yes. That's so great.

493
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:16,520
I just came back, actually,
from a workshop at, at a high school,

494
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,880
or up for a couple of days
worth of workshops out a high school.

495
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:23,760
And it was so fun to, introduce students

496
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:28,240
to some of the exercises that I do
in another, in another context, usually.

497
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:31,240
But for these high school,
these high school students,

498
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:33,480
20 of them
gathered around a bunch of tables,

499
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:36,800
tasting saltines.

500
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:40,400
And my my observation is,
I'm not interested in you deciding I want

501
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:41,760
I don't want you to rank them.

502
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,000
I don't want you to decide
which one is the best.

503
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,400
I want you to use all five of your senses
to pay attention

504
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,400
to this extremely simple food,

505
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:54,840
and see what can you know and how much
vocabulary can you use to do it.

506
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:58,440
And I mean, they had a ball and they were
completely engrossed and absorbed.

507
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:03,920
And this was a group, of students
who had, learning challenges.

508
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,920
That meant that attention was
one of the things that was,

509
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:10,440
was, difficult to come by, actually.

510
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:14,280
And so for them to be completely absorbed
in this activity,

511
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:18,200
was was fascinating to witness.

512
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,640
And I think, wow, we really
we really need to,

513
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:25,200
do more of this at all
stages of education.

514
00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:26,680
Yeah, yeah.

515
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:27,240
Yeah, yeah.

516
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,160
And and just to, I guess, one last thought.

517
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,240
I love this conversation.

518
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:34,920
Just the way that it gets students
to think more creatively

519
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:38,520
about the kind of language
they use to describe something.

520
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:40,240
And even just

521
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,240
that conversation
about how sometimes you don't have words.

522
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,240
And so it makes it even difficult
to describe that.

523
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:49,280
Right? Right, right.

524
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,440
I always introduce that by saying,
you know,

525
00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:56,200
think about how many shades of blue
you would be.

526
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:01,240
You know, it's the 20 of us in the room
right now named shades ofblue.

527
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:04,120
We would come up with a very long list.

528
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,120
But if I asked you to come up with,

529
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:09,840
names for smells at all, right.

530
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:13,040
Don't don't even narrow the category
at all.

531
00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:14,160
Just anything.

532
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,200
It doesn't even have to be food, you know?

533
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:17,920
How would you describe smells?

534
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:21,080
We'd run out really remarkably quickly.

535
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,440
And, you know, of course, in another
era would have been pretty different back

536
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:29,400
when much more of our safety and health
as a human being

537
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:33,360
relied on recognizing smells
and knowing when danger lurked.

538
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:38,680
So I'm, I'm wondering,

539
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:41,720
before
we move into more ASFS focused questions,

540
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:45,320
if there's a work of yours that you feel,

541
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:49,200
or what's a way of

542
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:51,320
trying

543
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:52,000
I guess. What

544
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:55,000
what's the the one work that you've done
that has just

545
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:59,400
maybe had more of a profound impact on you
as you researched it,

546
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:02,680
and wrote wrote it.

547
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,200
If there's a work that just, you know,
you're, you're especially like, that work,

548
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:10,320
is like my that is my personal milestone.

549
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:17,640
Well, it might be

550
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:18,840
given the number of miles.

551
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:21,840
Can I have a couple of milestones?

552
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:24,520
My road is longer than yours, Joshua.

553
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:28,240
I mean, that very first piece
called Recipes for Theory Making.

554
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,840
I had just come out of a dissertation
writing process

555
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:35,960
where I was surrounded by people
who were doing philosophy of science.

556
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:38,920
I was trying to do epistemology
theory of knowledge.

557
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:43,360
And I had a dissertation advisor
who was a truly wonderful human being.

558
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:45,640
I love Arthur Fine so much.

559
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:47,720
But, you know,
he was a philosopher of Einstein, right?

560
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:49,440
So, I was surrounded by these people.

561
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:50,920
So, that felt to me like,

562
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:54,720
a kind of a breakout piece saying,
no, there's

563
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:58,320
there's a way to think
about knowing and inquiry and thinking

564
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:02,280
that was not just science,
which that felt like

565
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,040
an accomplishment at the time.

566
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:08,840
And then, I mean, I guess right now
at the other end of things, I'm

567
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:11,040
a pretty darn slow writer.

568
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:12,800
A book takes me a number of years.

569
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:13,880
It's kind of embarrassing.

570
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,400
I think this I,
I was sure I was going to get this last

571
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:19,560
one done quickly, and I think it
still was like, I don't know,

572
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,720
12 years, 15 years really just absurd.

573
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,400
But I think it's been,

574
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:28,240
it's been pretty profound for me

575
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,560
because it has been at the name of it is,

576
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:35,280
I got to get this right now.

577
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:38,280
We had a little wrangling at the,
the publishers,

578
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,800
Parasitic Personhood
and the Ontology of Eating.

579
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:46,560
And I'm really trying to say
we need to think about what it is

580
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:50,640
to be a person, not just relationally,
but understanding always,

581
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:54,720
that we are in a world
in which some of those relations threaten

582
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,320
us, and we are always in relations
where we are threatening others,

583
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:02,280
and we have to come to terms with that.

584
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:07,160
And eventually some of those relations
are going to kill us.

585
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:11,120
And so I have to say, in a not maudlin
way, you know,

586
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:14,160
so I'm 64,

587
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:16,360
I'm closer to the end
than to the beginning,

588
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:19,560
and it's come to be more
and more important to me to think about,

589
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:24,680
you know,
how do I want to think about dying, right?

590
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:29,840
Like, how do I want my understanding
of my own death to be a part of my life?

591
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,360
Not in a maudlin way,
not in a depressed way,

592
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,360
but rather in a way that says, yeah,
this is what human beings do.

593
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:38,400
We bump along and then we die.

594
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,280
And so I guess I'm,

595
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:43,680
I don't know that
if at a different point in my life,

596
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:46,360
I would have probably been willing
to say any of these other works as well.

597
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:49,680
But right now, I'm just very aware
that I want

598
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,880
that work to help me to think
about what does it mean to,

599
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,760
you know, live and then die

600
00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:00,200
and to be food for other beings
after we're gone,

601
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:04,680
which is another slice
of what I'm trying to do in that book.

602
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:07,440
There's some really big questions.

603
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:10,480
And again, it just how food can really be

604
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:13,600
a really great vehicle
to think about those big questions.

605
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:14,960
Right.

606
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:16,280
And one of the things I'm excited

607
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,680
to talk with students about this,
I've done it one other time.

608
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:21,960
At an earlier stage in the process.

609
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,480
But one of the things I really am hoping
the students will wrestle with,

610
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:27,200
many of my students are, you know,

611
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,400
vegetarians and are really interested
in being sort of hands off.

612
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:31,960
Like, I don't want to harm anything else.

613
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:36,240
And I want students to wrestle
with the fact that however you slice it,

614
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:40,400
eating involves death.

615
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:43,920
I mean, you can say, well,
you know, if we ate only fruit, but,

616
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:48,440
even there, I think,

617
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:51,040
there are microbes and,

618
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:54,760
little critters living in our fruit
that we're still killing when we eat it.

619
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:57,720
So, I think

620
00:33:57,720 --> 00:33:59,760
unless you're unless you split the hair

621
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,760
very finely, the fact is that

622
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,560
because we eat, things die

623
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:08,560
and because things die,

624
00:34:08,720 --> 00:34:11,520
other things
eat is a question that I don't know.

625
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:15,200
It just feels like it's a good way
to organize our

626
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,560
our understanding
of who we are in the world.

627
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,600
So yeah,

628
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,600
and it doesn't need to be depressing.

629
00:34:24,720 --> 00:34:27,720
And it's it's
definitely a fascinating question.

630
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,160
And yeah, not depressing at all
because you're

631
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:33,720
I like how you said
this is what humans do.

632
00:34:33,720 --> 00:34:35,880
It's part of their part.

633
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:38,880
A part of the the gig. Yeah. Yeah.

634
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,000
Exactly, exactly, exactly.

635
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:44,840
We didn't sign on for it
at the beginning, but here we are.

636
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:45,120
Yeah.

637
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:48,840
So, kind of

638
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:51,840
shifting
gears and thinking about the ASFS.

639
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:52,440
Yeah.

640
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,640
When did you first, hear
about the organization

641
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,760
and when did you first participate
in the organization?

642
00:34:59,240 --> 00:34:59,600
I knew

643
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,920
you were going to ask that question,
and I meant to look at my CV this morning.

644
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:08,520
I don't have a year, but I remember
some very specific details about it.

645
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:12,000
I stumbled upon the organization

646
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:15,160
and submitted something

647
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:20,760
like the first time I came upon it,

648
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:24,960
the conference was in New York at NYU.

649
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:29,960
And I remember
staying in an un-air conditioned dorm room on

650
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,800
about the 12th floor.

651
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,160
And my roommate, I mean, I remember
such specific things about this

652
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:39,960
that it's ironic that the date
or what I presented is not among them.

653
00:35:41,720 --> 00:35:45,600
Fran Odera Oruka was there,
and she had just written a book

654
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:50,520
called A Good Soup Attracts
Chairs, which was a book about,

655
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:54,960
that emerged
from folk, folk understandings.

656
00:35:55,240 --> 00:35:56,880
Folk, an unfortunate word.

657
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:58,160
I should choose a different one.

658
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,880
But, traditional indigenous
understandings of food

659
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,280
and its role in culture
that came from Ghana.

660
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:08,960
And I was I was intrigued by her book.

661
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,680
I remembered that
I also, attended a session,

662
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:17,880
in which Betty Fussell
talked about her book about corn.

663
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:20,960
I think that is when I first,

664
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:23,960
I believe that I met Alice Julier at that,

665
00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:27,040
conference for the first time,
and I thought,

666
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:30,440
wow, this woman is a powerhouse
she had organized, I think.

667
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:35,080
I'm not sure she was the president then,
but she was certainly a a driving force.

668
00:36:35,240 --> 00:36:37,760
She had organized a bunch of panels,

669
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,760
throughout the conference,
you know, putting together,

670
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:45,000
groups of papers on particular topics.

671
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,040
So the conference had this amazing

672
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:50,120
sense of coherence.

673
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,720
And I just remember,

674
00:36:52,720 --> 00:36:58,240
again, I wish I remembered the stage
in my own work that I was then.

675
00:36:58,240 --> 00:37:01,240
Boy, I don't so let's move on.

676
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:06,960
But I remember this this just this relief
of coming home to a place

677
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:11,440
where nobody wondered for a minute
why I would be working on food.

678
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,240
I mean, I spent a lot.

679
00:37:13,240 --> 00:37:16,600
I wrote another book called
Exotic Appetites, and that also took,

680
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:18,040
you know, 15 years.

681
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:21,480
And part of it
is because for about 13 of those years

682
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:25,120
I was writing, you know, dear
philosophers, no, no, this is serious.

683
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:26,200
No, really, philosophers,

684
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,360
you should think this is serious too you
guys.

685
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:29,840
Would you please think this is serious?

686
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:31,680
You know, and,

687
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,800
you know, eventually
I found another audience

688
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,120
and sort of decided, well, philosophers,
you can think this is serious or not.

689
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:41,200
I'm. You know, I know I'm a philosopher.

690
00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:42,480
I'm going on from here.

691
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:48,520
And ASFS is the audience that gave me the

692
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:52,560
the power to be able to feel that.

693
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:54,480
And, you know, when I came to the ASFS

694
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,480
and I also found out, oh, there,
so that there's this parallel organization

695
00:37:57,760 --> 00:37:58,960
Ag Food and Human Values,

696
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:02,880
which was actually founded by
philosophers, which was really exciting,

697
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,960
you know, to me to realize, oh, there are
these two wonderful organizations.

698
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,920
And, and in one of those philosophers
were saying,

699
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:12,760
you know, a decade or more earlier, yeah.

700
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:14,640
Food, food and agriculture, they matter.

701
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,640
So I, you know, my first ASFS

702
00:38:17,720 --> 00:38:20,720
conference was very much a feeling of,

703
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:21,680
you know, coming home.

704
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:25,480
And then there was this wonderful thing
where nobody was expecting me

705
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:28,640
to listen to a talk during meals,
like meals were about meals.

706
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,680
And then there were,

707
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:33,000
field trips.

708
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,280
I don't remember the field trips
on that New York,

709
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:39,720
conference, because since then
there have been a couple more,

710
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:41,880
but I

711
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:45,960
remember that, you know,
there was a whole day of field excursions.

712
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:48,240
Wow. What a what an idea.

713
00:38:48,240 --> 00:38:50,520
So, it was,

714
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,960
it was a feeling of having come to a place
that I knew I was going to,

715
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:56,960
to keep coming back to,

716
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,840
and, you know, just a place that knew

717
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:01,880
that knew
they wanted philosophers to be there.

718
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:03,280
I guess that's the other part of it.

719
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,600
You know, if they had been like,
oh, God, that's that's way too

720
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:10,400
abstract or esoteric,
but but no, it wasn't.

721
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:13,400
In fact, one of my favorite,

722
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:17,280
moments of all times that,

723
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:21,360
I don't remember whether it was an Ag
ASFS, ASFS or 

724
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:25,320
Ag and Human Values conference
session, doesn't it really doesn't matter.

725
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:26,880
But, someone said

726
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,080
in response to a question, well,
I don't think no one,

727
00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:33,240
no one can help us here
except the philosophers.

728
00:39:33,240 --> 00:39:36,360
And I thought, oh, really?
We can be useful.

729
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:40,800
So there's always been, for me
this sense at, at those conferences

730
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,920
that there's actual work for philosophers
to do that

731
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:47,240
isn't just talking to other philosophers
about a philosophical argument

732
00:39:47,240 --> 00:39:48,480
that's been going on for a while.

733
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:52,320
It's like, no, no, we need
you guys to do some category sorting

734
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,680
and some conceptual analysis
and some big picture stuff

735
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,880
and some maybe like,
what does that mean kind of stuff?

736
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:01,440
So, it's been just, such a home for me.

737
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:03,600
Yeah.

738
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:08,360
I love that you're calling it a home
because it reminds me of my own mentor.

739
00:40:09,240 --> 00:40:12,600
Doctor Michael Wise, and he

740
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:14,520
often says you

741
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,520
need to find your people, like,
as a graduate student,

742
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:20,640
that was always his advice to to to me
and my peers is

743
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:22,200
you need to find your people.

744
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:26,280
And he would give the example of when
he went to a conference in animal studies.

745
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:30,160
And so I'm wondering is,
did you feel like you found your people?

746
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,160
And if you remember making
any kind of relate

747
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,600
networking relationships,
professional relationships,

748
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:39,600
during that first time

749
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,600
or even in other ASFS conferences.

750
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:46,680
Yes. I mean, I have I feel

751
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:49,920
it was definitely that, that place for me.

752
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:54,720
I remember hanging out with Fran a lot.

753
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,000
We were both newcomers
to the organization.

754
00:40:58,240 --> 00:41:00,240
There was less

755
00:41:00,240 --> 00:41:03,240
conscious,

756
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:07,640
networking going on then, or less let.

757
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:08,920
No, I shouldn't put it that way.

758
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:12,000
There was less sort of,
you know, new people

759
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:16,080
come here for this, reception
or graduate students come here.

760
00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:19,320
There was less infrastructure
making sure that that happened.

761
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,640
But I feel like

762
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:28,160
boy, I
wish I had a more, vivid memory of this,

763
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:32,840
but I feel like it was the case
that I had maybe published something

764
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:37,000
such that when I came into a setting,
people were like, oh, yeah,

765
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:41,640
we read something by you or we've
we've encountered something you've done.

766
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:44,880
I know that over the years it is.

767
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,160
Well, I don't remember that
first conference very well.

768
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,160
Over the years,
it has certainly been the case that,

769
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:52,800
connecting up

770
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,960
with other people
from multiple disciplines

771
00:41:55,960 --> 00:42:01,160
also has been one of the crucial aspects
of the conference.

772
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,760
Whether it's,

773
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:08,480
You know,

774
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:12,080
anthropologists working on cheese or,

775
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:19,160
Or historians or, animal scientists.

776
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:19,440
Right.

777
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:22,440
You know, that
I would not have encountered in other.

778
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:22,840
Right.

779
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:24,840
I mean, philosophers
maybe were going to encounter

780
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,840
other humanists in a lot of places,
but working in a context

781
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:34,320
in which you're going to encounter people
from so many disciplines across the whole

782
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:37,680
spectrum,

783
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,760
it's just, yeah, that's that's the real

784
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,920
meaning of cross-disciplinarity
interdisciplinarity.

785
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,200
All of the -arities

786
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:49,600
Yeah.

787
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:51,480
So I'm wondering now

788
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:54,720
kind of moving towards
thinking about the future,

789
00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:59,640
and ASFS

790
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:06,560
Because I would you, would you say that

791
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:10,280
ASFS has helped to make food studies

792
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:13,280
more popular with,

793
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:16,320
especially students, graduate students,

794
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:19,000
and early career

795
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,360
scholars?

796
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:24,680
Well,
I, I don't know if it's been responsible

797
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:29,080
for popularizing it, but I think
it has created such an important home.

798
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,960
And it has over the years,
been so intentional about

799
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,560
I believe it's been very intentional
about trying to say,

800
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:42,840
what are the ways that we can guarantee
that this scholarship gets taken

801
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:46,480
seriously in the places
it needs to be taken seriously.

802
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:52,760
Now, I'm speaking as a person in her 60s
whose tenure is a long time ago.

803
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:57,480
And so, I, I, I'm ready to be corrected

804
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:01,040
by younger scholars who might say it's
not actually that glam

805
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:04,360
It's not actually that
easy or smooth, but it feels

806
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:08,400
I've seen very intentional efforts,
whether it's things

807
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:11,400
like thinking hard about,

808
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:14,000
funding for graduate attendance,

809
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,000
thinking about the creation
of the graduate student

810
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:22,200
organization, thinking about, the ways

811
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,200
in which the journal,

812
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:29,280
which I edited for a number of years
with Kendall Albala

813
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:33,240
thinking about how that shows up
in ranking systems

814
00:44:33,240 --> 00:44:37,680
and really taking that seriously
so that you know, publishing in

815
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:42,480
it wasn't a demerit
instead of a, of a positive thing.

816
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:45,920
I see all of those as being,

817
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:48,240
really con

818
00:44:48,240 --> 00:44:52,240
intentional steps to say
we want to make sure

819
00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:56,240
that the study of food is not just not

820
00:44:56,240 --> 00:44:59,560
career suicide, but is is a career maker.

821
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,680
And what I see in the world around me

822
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:07,200
and I, I have to believe
that ASFS has been instrumental in

823
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,640
that is more and more places

824
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:14,400
where food is taken seriously.

825
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:16,240
In the

826
00:45:16,240 --> 00:45:19,840
academy, more and more courses
being offered,

827
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:23,680
more and more publications
in non-food studies journals.

828
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,800
And, you know, interestingly, things like,

829
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,400
I don't know,
would you call them knockoff or imitator,

830
00:45:32,720 --> 00:45:35,720
conferences,
you know, there are some of these,

831
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:40,800
pretend conferences
that sort of look like a society

832
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:45,760
of academic professionals, but
that are really sort of a for profit thing

833
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:48,760
that creates something that looks a lot
like an academic conference but isn't.

834
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:53,200
And, you know, those pop up every once
in a while in food and you think, well,

835
00:45:53,720 --> 00:45:54,960
we must be real.

836
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:58,960
And I think nobody would be bothering,
you know, there isn't a pop up conference

837
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:00,680
on dust, for instance, right?

838
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:05,120
Like there it's,
there's a reason that food

839
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:09,360
is being imitated in that way,
and it's that it is.

840
00:46:09,720 --> 00:46:11,320
It is a real life.

841
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:13,200
No questions about it. Part of,

842
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,800
the academy.

843
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:18,560
And whether or

844
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:21,720
not you're a part of ASFS,
I think you are benefiting

845
00:46:21,720 --> 00:46:27,320
from the kind of spadework the cultivation
that ASFS has done over the years

846
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:32,560
to make it possible for people
to not just do this work when it's safe,

847
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:36,880
but rather to do this
work from the outset.

848
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:41,040
And I'm going to guess that maybe you
your work is an instance of

849
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:44,240
doing it from the outset.

850
00:46:44,240 --> 00:46:47,240
Yes. 
Yeah, definitely. And,

851
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,080
I came from literature department
into a history department.

852
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:58,000
But just, you know, having mentors
who I know in some way

853
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:01,720
have been part of ASFS
or even other organizations,

854
00:47:03,720 --> 00:47:07,400
where where food is central
has been important to like being able

855
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:11,040
to imagine where I could go
and what I could do.

856
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:12,960
And that there is a space like

857
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:15,960
like you kind of mentioned
with the first ASFS meeting for you,

858
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:20,160
there's a home for things
I want to think about and write about.

859
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:24,680
Something that

860
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:28,560
I'm hearing also is
there seems to be a tension between like

861
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:31,880
food studies
as a popular subject and food studies

862
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:34,880
as a subject
that needs to be taken seriously.

863
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:36,960
And I'm wondering
if you've ever observed this

864
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:41,160
or seen this in conversation where
someone might say especially maybe someone

865
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:45,960
who doesn't do food studies would say,
oh, well, food that's really popular.

866
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:47,360
Yeah.

867
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:48,200
But then yes.

868
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:50,960
Yeah. You're kind of like, well,

869
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,320
yeah, it may be,
but then I have to legitimate i5.

870
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:58,440
So I'm wondering if you play with that
or see that tension yourself.

871
00:47:58,920 --> 00:47:59,840
Right, right.

872
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:02,280
Yes, absolutely.

873
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:02,960
Indeed.

874
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:06,120
Paul Thompson, an important
philosopher of food and agriculture

875
00:48:06,120 --> 00:48:10,640
who was in, part of Ag and Human Values
from its birth.

876
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:16,480
Has a piece in which he talks
about the ways in which, food ethics.

877
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:18,240
I'm trying to remember if it's in his.

878
00:48:18,240 --> 00:48:20,040
He has a couple of great titles.

879
00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:22,440
I don't know why
he got to decide his titles.

880
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:26,760
The first one was from Field to Fork,
and the next one was From Silo to Spoon.

881
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:27,680
Such great titles.

882
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:32,800
And, he is,

883
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:36,520
he observes that there's a kind of a sense
that, you know, food ethics

884
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:41,520
is this activity of telling people
what they should eat and why.

885
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,480
And he's like, no, that's

886
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,560
that's a popular thing,
you know, that's going on in the media.

887
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:51,520
And we're getting lots of information
from TikTok or,

888
00:48:53,720 --> 00:48:55,560
other, other,

889
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:58,960
mainstream media
about what we should eat and why.

890
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:05,320
But that's a different from the
you know, the study of the ethics of food.

891
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:07,080
And I think that's really true.

892
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:09,200
I mean, it's a kind of an interesting

893
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:12,200
to be honest, it's an interesting problem
for a philosopher to have because

894
00:49:12,240 --> 00:49:16,840
we don't usually encounter people
knowing anything about most of the things,

895
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,840
like if you say, I study ontology,
I study the nature of time.

896
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:21,960
Nobody's like, well, time.
That's a popular thing, right?

897
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:23,320
Like and everyone's like,

898
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:27,080
well, yes, I live in time,
but I don't have much to say beyond that.

899
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,360
And so I, I think I generally

900
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:33,720
tend to regard it as an opportunity

901
00:49:34,240 --> 00:49:40,760
because, in a few clicks
you can get people to realizing, oh,

902
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,680
if that's what philosophers think about,
I guess I really think

903
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:47,680
philosophy is important,
which I regard as an opportunity,

904
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,760
you know, and at the same time, it's also,

905
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:53,880
it also can be.

906
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:55,040
Frustrating,

907
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:58,040
I suppose, for people to think, oh, well,
you know,

908
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:02,040
I read that one person,
you know, in my local newspaper,

909
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:05,080
they do, they do that,
they talked about food so are they a food

910
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:06,280
scholar?

911
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,640
You know, maybe not so much.

912
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:10,520
Maybe not so much.

913
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:12,480
Yeah.

914
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:16,880
In my own classes,
we sometimes have a discussion

915
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,880
about, you know, what's the difference
between a food scholar and a foodie?

916
00:50:20,240 --> 00:50:22,720
And can they ever be the same?

917
00:50:22,720 --> 00:50:24,400
I would say, oh, yeah.

918
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:27,080
A foodie could be a food scholar. But,
yeah.

919
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:29,640
Let's talk a little bit
about what that means.

920
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:30,400
Yeah.

921
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:32,880
Yeah, that's
that's a really interesting point.

922
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:35,400
In fact, just, earlier this morning, I,

923
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,600
I attended, an online seminar.

924
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:44,200
There's a, there's a newer organization
which, has come to be a part of ASFS,

925
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:46,680
which is called Culinary Mind.

926
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,720
And it's, philosophers, for the most part,

927
00:50:49,720 --> 00:50:53,320
are philosophically inclined
folks, studying food.

928
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:55,040
It's,

929
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:57,680
it was the brainchild of Andrea Borghini,

930
00:50:57,680 --> 00:51:00,680
who is an Italian guy.

931
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:05,120
And in this country,
Megan Dean is the sort of us, anchor.

932
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:09,320
And they've been coming to ASFS
now for quite a number of years.

933
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:10,560
It's really it's so exciting.

934
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,560
There's like a lot of philosophers
in the room all the time now.

935
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,120
But the talk today was by a guy
named Nicola Perullo

936
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:20,880
who is at, the University
of Gastronomic Sciences

937
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:24,600
in Bra, Italy,
which is an amazing institution.

938
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:30,880
And, he was talking about,
the notion of restaurant criticism

939
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:34,080
and the difference between restaurant
criticism and restaurant reviewing.

940
00:51:34,560 --> 00:51:37,560
And he began his talk by saying,
you know, look,

941
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:41,800
I came to the study of food, actually,
as someone who was passionate about food

942
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:44,800
and about wine,
and I did it about 30 years ago,

943
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:50,240
and I came to it
as someone who was an aficionado

944
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:52,720
and someone who was passionate
about this thing.

945
00:51:52,720 --> 00:51:55,800
And he said,
I kind of think you have to have that.

946
00:51:56,040 --> 00:51:58,560
So, while I do think it's,
you know, while he would say,

947
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:00,960
I do think it's the case
that you have to be a serious scholar,

948
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:04,320
and there is a difference
between a food scholar and a foodie,

949
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:09,000
I think Nicola might say,
but you have to be a foodie.

950
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:12,560
Of course, sometimes
I get a lot of demerits, in this category,

951
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:16,560
because I will confess things like,
you know, I sort of eat

952
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:20,680
a lot of the things that I ate
in my growing up Midwestern childhood,

953
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:22,640
you know,

954
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:27,000
mashed potatoes and a vegetarian version
of sloppy joes, for instance.

955
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:29,440
So, I am not

956
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:32,440
I am not always a person,

957
00:52:32,640 --> 00:52:35,440
who's very sophisticated,
frankly, in my taste.

958
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:38,440
And I've tried to be unapologetic
about that, but,

959
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:42,200
but to believe that there's
another part of the world for me to,

960
00:52:42,240 --> 00:52:43,360
you know, to occupy

961
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:46,200
and also my friends would say,
oh, no, you're definitely a foodie.

962
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:48,720
You know, you can
you can split hairs if you want here.

963
00:52:48,720 --> 00:52:50,640
But no, no, you're definitely a foodie.

964
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:52,960
So yeah, I think,

965
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:56,840
I mean, frankly, it's one of the reasons
that I originally started thinking

966
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,240
I wanted to take food seriously

967
00:52:58,240 --> 00:53:01,440
was that since I had been a little kid,
I had been really serious

968
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:06,000
about cooking or as serious as a,
you know, an eight year old can be.

969
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:10,800
And, you know, meanwhile, I was surrounded
by all these philosophers of science.

970
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:12,200
And, you know,
people would always say, oh,

971
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:13,960
what science are you most interested in?

972
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:18,120
And I would think, well, I'm not actually
I mean, I am interested in science, but

973
00:53:18,720 --> 00:53:21,480
it was clear that that wasn't
the place I was going to

974
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,960
for examples or illustrations
or conceptualizations.

975
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,000
That was that was food.

976
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:30,000
So, I think,

977
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:32,640
you know, just as I would say,
you can you can

978
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:35,040
you really can
only be a good philosopher of science

979
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:39,480
if you embed yourself
or root yourself in some science.

980
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:42,520
And as my colleague
John would say, you can't be a,

981
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:46,080
a philosopher of

982
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:49,120
rap unless you are in that world.

983
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:51,440
I think you can't. You.

984
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,440
I don't think you should be a philosopher
of food unless you really are

985
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:59,040
thinking about food a lot
and eating it and enjoying it and and

986
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:02,840
and hating it and worrying about it
and all of those things.

987
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:05,840
As a regular old person at the table.

988
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:11,040
I think this segues nicely
to this, this other question.

989
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:13,920
I mean, I'm
going to I'm going to read it from here.

990
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:17,600
It says foods three pillars,
production, distribution and consumption

991
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:21,520
are practices outside
traditional academic labor.

992
00:54:22,120 --> 00:54:25,880
How has food studies scholarship work
to integrate academic research

993
00:54:26,240 --> 00:54:29,160
with the lived experiences
and labor of food

994
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,160
producing communities?

995
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:34,480
Could you ask the

996
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:38,800
how has what could you ask that part
again, just from the how has.

997
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:40,400
How has

998
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:44,280
food studies scholarship worked
to integrate academic research

999
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:48,120
with the lived experiences
and labor of food producing communities?

1000
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:51,120
So I guess for me, in my mind,
I'm imagining

1001
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:54,360
kind of the flip side
of what we were talking about.

1002
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:58,320
How much of the lived experience
of the foodies, right?

1003
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:01,160
Or people who, who cook,

1004
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:05,640
produce our food, grow our food,
as you know, becoming integrated

1005
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:08,880
and I guess their labor being taken
seriously in our work.

1006
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:10,200
Yeah.

1007
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:12,520
That's a that's an interesting question.

1008
00:55:12,520 --> 00:55:15,360
And I think

1009
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,240
that the answer is quite a lot.

1010
00:55:18,240 --> 00:55:21,960
I just had the experience of reading.

1011
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:25,560
Well reviewing, examining

1012
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:29,760
and ranking a group of about 12 books

1013
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:34,000
that were submitted as part of the ASFS's
annual

1014
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:37,920
contest,

1015
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:39,360
to give a prize to,

1016
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:42,280
what's regarded as the

1017
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:46,360
the finest first book
by an ASFS member.

1018
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:49,800
And when I think about this, the scope

1019
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:52,960
of topics covered by those books,

1020
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:56,880
what I saw were books that explored

1021
00:55:56,880 --> 00:55:59,840
restaurant work and not, you know,

1022
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:04,800
Top Chef or the glamorous positions,
but like being a line cook or being,

1023
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:08,320
you know, being a front end worker.

1024
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:16,960
I saw several works
that were about agriculture, you know,

1025
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:21,800
that were about agricultural workers jobs
and how that work

1026
00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:26,320
could or should be the part,
you know, shape

1027
00:56:26,480 --> 00:56:31,040
how a culture understands itself
or how a political economy should operate.

1028
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,720
I saw works that looked at the way
in which

1029
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:39,720
I would add a fourth pillar
to that list of three pillars.

1030
00:56:39,840 --> 00:56:42,480
There was no discussion of waste. And

1031
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:45,680
its distribution,

1032
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:49,600
but one of the one of the works,
for instance, explored

1033
00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:53,640
the whole notion of repurposing food
waste.

1034
00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:57,880
And reducing its, its presence.

1035
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:02,840
So when I look at food
studies scholarship,

1036
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:07,000
I see this whole layer of,

1037
00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:10,040
people's lives

1038
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,640
not just being acknowledged,
but being attended

1039
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:16,640
to and,

1040
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,040
focused on in a way that says, you know,
these are

1041
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:26,760
these are crucial to understanding
what a what a society is.

1042
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:29,800
I'm going to give a really homespun

1043
00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:32,800
analogy here to say,

1044
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:34,560
when I was

1045
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:38,040
when I was growing up, I was
I grew up in rural northern Wisconsin.

1046
00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:39,920
I was a big 4Her.

1047
00:57:39,920 --> 00:57:42,200
And, you know,
I took cooking as a project,

1048
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:44,360
and I learned to knit
and all these things.

1049
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:47,160
And I very acutely in graduate school,

1050
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:50,640
felt like those were things
that I should never say out loud.

1051
00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:50,880
Right?

1052
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:54,000
Like I tried to shed my Midwestern accent

1053
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:59,960
and I tried to never say anything
about rural life.

1054
00:57:59,960 --> 00:58:03,560
I tried not to talk about,
you know, my family.

1055
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:06,960
You know,
my family business was a creamery.

1056
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:09,720
I knew all this stuff
about the dairy industry,

1057
00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:12,840
and I never,
ever would have admitted that to anyone

1058
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:16,880
because that felt to me like that was
that was zero part of intellectual life.

1059
00:58:17,080 --> 00:58:19,360
There was no way that was relevant.

1060
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:22,320
And indeed I would reveal myself.

1061
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:25,800
I know that many, people of color
and many working class

1062
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:29,920
people have far more profound
experiences of that than I did.

1063
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:33,240
But it's been interesting, and indeed
it's been one way for me to sort of,

1064
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:38,680
be a be a careful listener

1065
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:42,840
when I hear accounts of exclusion
for me to think, oh,

1066
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:46,280
think about how you didn't dare
say those things, and you were, you know,

1067
00:58:47,200 --> 00:58:49,400
middle class white lady, right?

1068
00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:51,920
But for me, that was very interesting.

1069
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:54,920
And now I, I feel like, of course,

1070
00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:57,920
those are relevant parts of my
my biography.

1071
00:58:58,080 --> 00:59:01,080
And indeed, there things that I feel,

1072
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:05,400
are important for me to tell

1073
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:09,200
because obviously they're relevant
to the kinds of questions that I'm asking.

1074
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,080
In other words,
it feels like it's not just like,

1075
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:13,440
oh, I'm not embarrassed anymore,
but like, well,

1076
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:15,600
of course
people would think that that was relevant.

1077
00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:15,800
You know?

1078
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:17,240
Of course it would matter that,

1079
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:21,080
you know, I know a lot about butter
for a very long time, you know, so I,

1080
00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:24,600
I know I kind of skittered off
into the personal there, but,

1081
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:29,960
but I think the, the volume of scholarship
and the kinds of things

1082
00:59:29,960 --> 00:59:34,960
that are talked about at,
our conferences are all illustrative of,

1083
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:37,280
the degree to

1084
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:41,080
which Food Studies says, yeah,
we're not just talking about,

1085
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:44,200
you know, fine dining restaurants
and cultivating your palette

1086
00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:47,520
to be able to appreciate, differences
among,

1087
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:52,200
vintages of Rieslings.

1088
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:56,880
Right.

1089
00:59:56,880 --> 00:59:58,400
I think that makes a lot of sense.

1090
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:02,280
And, even even though you mentioned,
you know, moving into the personal,

1091
01:00:02,280 --> 01:00:07,560
I think that a lot of food studies
scholarship emerges from the personal

1092
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:08,200
life.

1093
01:00:08,200 --> 01:00:11,200
I think a lot of my favorite books
kind of start off

1094
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:14,960
with that kind of anecdotal biography.

1095
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:20,800
Or it kind of carries the eye
throughout the entire world, for sure.

1096
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:24,400
And, and you must understand that
as a philosopher,

1097
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,840
this is something that I was taught
was inappropriate.

1098
01:00:29,840 --> 01:00:34,320
In fact, one of my very first rejection
letters, came

1099
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:38,160
from a guy who said, thank you for your,

1100
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:40,560
submission.

1101
01:00:40,560 --> 01:00:46,080
However, this is not however,
this is not philosophy, but autobiography

1102
01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:49,840
filled with, I think, and I assert

1103
01:00:49,840 --> 01:00:52,880
and I so my paper was rejected

1104
01:00:53,400 --> 01:00:57,720
as personal simply
because I used the first person pronoun.

1105
01:00:57,920 --> 01:01:01,560
So, anything beyond that would have been
like beyond the pail philosophy

1106
01:01:01,560 --> 01:01:06,240
is supposed to be, you know, about humans
in general or the view from nowhere.

1107
01:01:06,600 --> 01:01:10,080
And so the idea of starting a work
with a story

1108
01:01:10,080 --> 01:01:13,920
that happened in your kitchen, again,
not a way to get a job, hook.

1109
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:17,800
I guess, in terms of kind
of carrying the continuum

1110
01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:20,800
from where we left off.

1111
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,120
How has or what has ASFS

1112
01:01:24,120 --> 01:01:29,200
has done to encourage diversification
of its membership and its leadership?

1113
01:01:29,680 --> 01:01:32,680
Over the years?

1114
01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:36,360
I think that's very much a work
in progress.

1115
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:40,480
And the progress
has sometimes been slow and

1116
01:01:41,640 --> 01:01:43,280
stumbling.

1117
01:01:43,280 --> 01:01:46,280
It has been certainly well intentioned.

1118
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:50,360
Intentions are different from

1119
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:54,560
success and I think we are still.

1120
01:01:56,640 --> 01:01:59,640
Working at that.

1121
01:02:00,680 --> 01:02:05,760
I one of the most concrete things
that I can point to.

1122
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:08,920
Well, a couple of things. The,

1123
01:02:11,400 --> 01:02:13,120
NEH grant.

1124
01:02:13,120 --> 01:02:15,840
Am I right that it's an NEH grant?

1125
01:02:15,840 --> 01:02:19,040
Which was applied for successfully, which,

1126
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:22,920
which I think has offered some funds

1127
01:02:22,920 --> 01:02:25,920
for, concrete work.

1128
01:02:26,200 --> 01:02:29,200
A second thing I would point to is the

1129
01:02:29,280 --> 01:02:31,560
the committee.

1130
01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:34,520
And now, to be honest,
I've forgotten the name of the committee,

1131
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:38,080
but that has
that is focusing on addressing,

1132
01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:41,920
diversification of the organization.

1133
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:44,920
I say stumbling efforts because,

1134
01:02:46,280 --> 01:02:50,320
we often struggled to decide
where to begin.

1135
01:02:50,320 --> 01:02:53,080
And as a result, we don't begin.

1136
01:02:53,080 --> 01:02:55,360
We often also,

1137
01:02:55,360 --> 01:02:57,480
struggle under the fact that a lot of us

1138
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:00,480
work at jobs
that are pretty labor intensive.

1139
01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:01,440
And this comes out of,

1140
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:07,120
this comes out of our, our other time.

1141
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:10,400
And so we don't give it the time

1142
01:03:10,400 --> 01:03:14,040
that such an issue definitely deserves.

1143
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:17,040
So, I guess I'm not.

1144
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:21,040
You will notice
that I'm not the detail person.

1145
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:24,000
So I'm not,

1146
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:27,120
going to be the most informed source

1147
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:32,120
on, say, how that NSF grant
I'm sorry, NEH grant that came

1148
01:03:33,240 --> 01:03:35,520
to be or the terms of it

1149
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:38,520
or the kinds of projects
that it has launched.

1150
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:41,560
But I do know that

1151
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:44,600
the issues explored,

1152
01:03:44,600 --> 01:03:48,320
the folks represented at conferences,

1153
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:53,320
and the composition of our leadership

1154
01:03:54,760 --> 01:03:58,920
has changed in identifiable ways

1155
01:03:58,920 --> 01:04:03,080
since that first conference I attended,
which was definitely in the 90s.

1156
01:04:03,840 --> 01:04:05,000
Sometime.

1157
01:04:05,000 --> 01:04:09,000
So, that's a very inadequate answer
to a really serious question.

1158
01:04:10,240 --> 01:04:14,560
And I'm, I apologize
that I can't be more detailed about it

1159
01:04:14,560 --> 01:04:18,480
because obviously
it's really it's really important.

1160
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:24,640
And of any discipline or interdiscipline
that should be addressing,

1161
01:04:27,040 --> 01:04:30,360
and placing,

1162
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:33,600
placing diversity,

1163
01:04:33,600 --> 01:04:36,600
equity and inclusion at its very center.

1164
01:04:36,720 --> 01:04:39,720
Food is such a subject.

1165
01:04:40,200 --> 01:04:43,160
Precisely because,

1166
01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:44,760
of its centrality to human being,

1167
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:48,520
and also precisely because so much of

1168
01:04:49,560 --> 01:04:53,160
the labor of the world for producing food

1169
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:57,000
is marginalized people,

1170
01:04:57,000 --> 01:05:00,000
most of whom are people of color.

1171
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:04,480
And I'm wondering if you've

1172
01:05:04,680 --> 01:05:07,600
or you know, of any kind of conferences
or themed

1173
01:05:07,600 --> 01:05:10,680
presentations that the ASFS has,

1174
01:05:10,760 --> 01:05:13,720
has organized and done,

1175
01:05:13,720 --> 01:05:17,640
that address the,
those issues that are issues of culture

1176
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:21,520
and ethnic and, class diversity
in, in food

1177
01:05:21,520 --> 01:05:24,520
studies.

1178
01:05:24,640 --> 01:05:27,320
I know that

1179
01:05:27,320 --> 01:05:33,640
small conferences have been organized
in the last five years, and I'm sorry,

1180
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:36,800
I can't give you any specifics
about those.

1181
01:05:42,120 --> 01:05:45,120
So, then I guess, you had also mentioned,

1182
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:48,720
changes from the conference
you went in the 90s to today.

1183
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:51,840
I'm wondering
what are some of the newer ideas

1184
01:05:51,840 --> 01:05:55,080
that you see junior scholars bringing in?

1185
01:05:55,440 --> 01:05:57,920
And do you think that that'll shift

1186
01:05:59,840 --> 01:06:02,840
the ASFS's direction in any way?

1187
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:06,360
So what maybe disciplinary trends
are newer scholars

1188
01:06:06,360 --> 01:06:09,360
bringing or topics
that they're discussing,

1189
01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:12,560
but you see, kind of taking the
the first in a new direction.

1190
01:06:18,480 --> 01:06:19,080
Again,

1191
01:06:19,080 --> 01:06:22,000
that's going to be one of those questions
I'm not very good at.

1192
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:25,280
I think one of the truths
about my last few years is that I have

1193
01:06:25,280 --> 01:06:28,280
been,

1194
01:06:28,320 --> 01:06:31,160
an ASFS attender, who has been very much

1195
01:06:31,160 --> 01:06:35,440
focused on her own
needs to finish this God darn book.

1196
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:39,360
And so I've been going to things
where I felt like, yes, I can,

1197
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:44,720
I can get some of what I need there or or,
you know, here's another thing

1198
01:06:44,720 --> 01:06:46,640
that happens as you

1199
01:06:46,640 --> 01:06:50,360
advance in the discipline as you're like,
oh, one of my friends is giving a talk.

1200
01:06:50,360 --> 01:06:51,160
I'm going to go hear it.

1201
01:06:51,160 --> 01:06:55,000
I have no interest in it at all,
but I really want to be there and support

1202
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:56,120
them and see what happens.

1203
01:06:57,240 --> 01:06:58,800
So so I'm,

1204
01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:03,080
I'm what I'm saying is you're inviting me
to think about what I'm going

1205
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:06,240
to do at this summer's conference with,
which is going to be different.

1206
01:07:06,240 --> 01:07:07,840
I'm going to be a different person.

1207
01:07:07,840 --> 01:07:10,640
I'm going to be different, Joshua.

1208
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:12,840
But in all seriousness,

1209
01:07:12,840 --> 01:07:15,840
I think in the last few years,

1210
01:07:15,840 --> 01:07:19,000
really partly as a result of Covid, partly

1211
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:22,000
as a result of the expense of travel,

1212
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:27,120
and partly a as a result
of the possibilities of technology,

1213
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:31,400
I think we are having to confront
more and more the modes

1214
01:07:31,400 --> 01:07:34,400
in which we engage with each other

1215
01:07:34,520 --> 01:07:39,720
and the modes that we regard as wonderful

1216
01:07:39,720 --> 01:07:44,240
and as having possibilities
that that we ought to explore.

1217
01:07:44,280 --> 01:07:47,640
I mean, look at this discussion
that we're having.

1218
01:07:49,560 --> 01:07:52,360
Even even though the technology was there,

1219
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:56,040
I bet before the pandemic
this would have been unlikely.

1220
01:07:56,120 --> 01:07:56,840
Right?

1221
01:07:56,840 --> 01:08:00,000
The idea of having long form
interviews over Zoom,

1222
01:08:00,440 --> 01:08:02,040
you know, there was whatever that,

1223
01:08:03,600 --> 01:08:06,840
there were there have been technologies
that were that would have made

1224
01:08:06,840 --> 01:08:10,440
this possible, you know, for ten years
now, probably, maybe more.

1225
01:08:11,360 --> 01:08:15,040
So, I think it's, you know, it's
a really interesting question

1226
01:08:15,360 --> 01:08:18,360
whether ASFS,

1227
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:20,760
like, how will we will

1228
01:08:20,760 --> 01:08:23,760
we resolve or will we,

1229
01:08:24,680 --> 01:08:26,720
decide it doesn't need to be resolved

1230
01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:30,120
how we how we communicate with each other
at these conferences?

1231
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:34,320
Will large conferences
come to be an odd way

1232
01:08:35,520 --> 01:08:37,440
to exchange our ideas?

1233
01:08:37,440 --> 01:08:39,200
I mean, I sort of like to imagine

1234
01:08:39,200 --> 01:08:42,200
that we won't stop gathering in places
where we can eat together.

1235
01:08:43,080 --> 01:08:44,000
But who knows?

1236
01:08:44,000 --> 01:08:47,080
I mean, during the pandemic,
I remember going to a chocolate workshop,

1237
01:08:48,120 --> 01:08:50,760
and we all got the chocolate
in the mail beforehand.

1238
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:53,760
And so we all tasted the chocolate at,
you know, a given moment,

1239
01:08:54,120 --> 01:08:55,760
and we could see each other on Zoom.

1240
01:08:55,760 --> 01:08:57,800
And yeah,
so we had an experience together,

1241
01:08:57,800 --> 01:09:00,120
but there was definitely
an element missing.

1242
01:09:01,160 --> 01:09:04,040
So, I think,

1243
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:07,040
some of what I see is

1244
01:09:07,320 --> 01:09:10,200
modes of

1245
01:09:10,200 --> 01:09:13,200
modes of presentation,

1246
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:17,280
really high level,

1247
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:21,600
attention

1248
01:09:21,600 --> 01:09:26,240
to how to think about social media.

1249
01:09:27,400 --> 01:09:27,800
Right?

1250
01:09:27,800 --> 01:09:32,120
I'm just I'm, I'm really impressed
by the scholarship on social media

1251
01:09:32,120 --> 01:09:36,280
that younger scholars are doing,
because there's just clearly so much there

1252
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:39,280
to think about. And,

1253
01:09:41,240 --> 01:09:43,520
and I'm glad folks are,
folks are doing it.

1254
01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:45,560
It's not it's not going to be me
that's doing it.

1255
01:09:45,560 --> 01:09:49,920
And I and I know that I'm benefiting
from that scholarship a great deal.

1256
01:09:50,240 --> 01:09:53,240
I mentioned earlier, the organization,

1257
01:09:53,640 --> 01:09:56,640
Culinary Mind, and I do have to say,

1258
01:09:57,720 --> 01:09:59,360
it's just amazing to me

1259
01:09:59,360 --> 01:10:03,560
to see the breadth of things
that philosophers are bringing

1260
01:10:03,600 --> 01:10:08,920
to the conference and philosophers
of, of a lot of ages.

1261
01:10:08,920 --> 01:10:10,360
But, you know, mostly,

1262
01:10:12,320 --> 01:10:13,560
assistant or

1263
01:10:13,560 --> 01:10:17,440
early associate professors are saying,
yeah, we're that's what we do.

1264
01:10:17,480 --> 01:10:20,520
We're philosophers of food,
and we're thinking about it, you know, in

1265
01:10:20,520 --> 01:10:24,440
terms of ethics, in terms of esthetics,
in terms of culture,

1266
01:10:25,120 --> 01:10:28,400
in terms of,
metaphysics, in terms of epistemology.

1267
01:10:28,800 --> 01:10:34,120
So, you know, for my own
very idiosyncratic corner, I will say that

1268
01:10:34,800 --> 01:10:39,120
I'm just so glad to have that many

1269
01:10:39,120 --> 01:10:42,880
philosophers at the table 20 years ago,
probably something like that.

1270
01:10:42,880 --> 01:10:46,480
A group of us, a much smaller group of us,

1271
01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:50,680
launched, sort of short lived,

1272
01:10:52,160 --> 01:10:54,000
organization

1273
01:10:54,000 --> 01:10:57,400
of philosophers of food
and tried to keep it afloat.

1274
01:10:58,920 --> 01:11:03,040
And we kind of gave up and decided

1275
01:11:03,040 --> 01:11:07,120
really,
that ASFS could serve the, the need.

1276
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:11,880
So I'm just I'm so excited
that there are enough philosophers

1277
01:11:11,880 --> 01:11:15,320
now that, you know, you couldn't
fit us all onto a 747 maybe.

1278
01:11:15,320 --> 01:11:16,680
I don't know if that's
probably not true, but,

1279
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:21,880
we used to make this joke like, you know,
we can't all ride in the same car

1280
01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:24,840
because if we did, you know,
the discipline would die.

1281
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:26,800
But that's no way.

1282
01:11:26,800 --> 01:11:29,400
Nowhere near true anymore.

1283
01:11:29,400 --> 01:11:33,720
And so, again, very selfishly, for me,
one of the exciting things

1284
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:36,720
has been this really robust presence
of philosophers

1285
01:11:37,280 --> 01:11:40,280
at the conference.

1286
01:11:41,040 --> 01:11:42,600
And I guess adding to that,

1287
01:11:42,600 --> 01:11:46,680
thinking about not just the scope
of all the disciplines that come in, but,

1288
01:11:47,400 --> 01:11:50,400
thinking now internationally,
the ASFS,

1289
01:11:50,920 --> 01:11:53,040
is, you know,
an international organization,

1290
01:11:53,040 --> 01:11:57,000
but membership is largely drawn
from North America.

1291
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:01,080
I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit
about why you think that is.

1292
01:12:02,640 --> 01:12:05,640
And if it says something about our field,

1293
01:12:05,680 --> 01:12:08,880
and if you think that's
changed over time in any way.

1294
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:13,760
Yes. I'm, I'm, as you asked

1295
01:12:13,760 --> 01:12:16,760
this question, were,
of course, in a situation in which,

1296
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:20,600
questions are flowing on the ASFS

1297
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:23,920
discussion list about,

1298
01:12:24,200 --> 01:12:25,000
what do you think?

1299
01:12:25,000 --> 01:12:28,280
Should we come to the US
this summer for the conference in Oregon?

1300
01:12:29,160 --> 01:12:31,640
Which is a very, very,
very serious question

1301
01:12:31,640 --> 01:12:35,640
for international scholars at this time
in America's political history.

1302
01:12:36,600 --> 01:12:39,440
And that's
I mean, it just it devastates me that

1303
01:12:39,440 --> 01:12:42,560
that's the question
that is being asked about coming here.

1304
01:12:46,320 --> 01:12:49,560
As far as, you know, I'm I'm really,

1305
01:12:50,880 --> 01:12:53,880
I'm confused
about how to think about this.

1306
01:12:54,720 --> 01:12:58,720
And I, you know, again, want to own my age
and the way

1307
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:04,080
in which I value
face to face participation, in ways

1308
01:13:04,080 --> 01:13:08,880
that just maybe are not that big
of a deal for many people,

1309
01:13:12,280 --> 01:13:15,200
who are newer in their careers.

1310
01:13:15,200 --> 01:13:19,200
And have spent more of a larger percentage

1311
01:13:19,200 --> 01:13:22,200
of their life with technology.

1312
01:13:23,120 --> 01:13:24,000
But I mean,

1313
01:13:24,000 --> 01:13:28,920
when I as I've been coming up
organizing academic organizations

1314
01:13:28,920 --> 01:13:33,720
have for the most part in philosophy
been nation based.

1315
01:13:33,720 --> 01:13:34,120
Right?

1316
01:13:34,120 --> 01:13:38,400
So there's, the Association
for the Study of.

1317
01:13:38,640 --> 01:13:40,920
All right. I'm sorry. That's us.

1318
01:13:40,920 --> 01:13:44,120
The Society for Women
and Philosophy was an organization of

1319
01:13:45,920 --> 01:13:46,560
Americans.

1320
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:49,560
There was a
and there was a Canadian version of it.

1321
01:13:50,680 --> 01:13:53,600
There's
the American Philosophical Association,

1322
01:13:53,600 --> 01:13:56,360
and many of those organizations, really

1323
01:13:56,360 --> 01:13:58,800
for reasons of how did you get around?

1324
01:13:58,800 --> 01:14:01,360
I mean, how would you have
an international society?

1325
01:14:01,360 --> 01:14:04,320
And so it doesn't surprise me

1326
01:14:04,320 --> 01:14:07,320
that the organization began that way.

1327
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:13,360
And, it

1328
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:17,520
wouldn't surprise me
if organizations said there's

1329
01:14:17,520 --> 01:14:20,800
going to be a way in which we're going
to decide we want to continue

1330
01:14:22,240 --> 01:14:23,560
or, no, let me put it this way.

1331
01:14:23,560 --> 01:14:26,560
It wouldn't surprise me
if, say, New Zealand philosophers said,

1332
01:14:26,760 --> 01:14:27,600
yeah, you know what?

1333
01:14:27,600 --> 01:14:32,320
What maybe come to your thing sometimes
and we'll maybe participate

1334
01:14:32,320 --> 01:14:33,960
in the in the Zoom versions

1335
01:14:33,960 --> 01:14:37,360
and we'll maybe submit journals
to your paper, papers to your journals.

1336
01:14:37,640 --> 01:14:41,040
But we really think we need a New Zealand
study of food and society.

1337
01:14:43,200 --> 01:14:45,000
Or or,

1338
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:50,120
we need a regional one
that, where folks from Southeast

1339
01:14:50,120 --> 01:14:53,240
Asia could, like, get there
in a reasonable amount of time and so on.

1340
01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:57,000
So I'm,
I'm really interested in this question.

1341
01:14:57,000 --> 01:14:58,240
And this is genuine interest.

1342
01:14:58,240 --> 01:15:03,080
This isn't, you know, my Midwestern way
of being hostile to the to the very idea.

1343
01:15:03,120 --> 01:15:05,520
But I'm, I'm really curious.

1344
01:15:05,520 --> 01:15:09,240
There's there's every way
I know when I was coediting the journal

1345
01:15:09,240 --> 01:15:10,760
that we spent a lot of time

1346
01:15:10,760 --> 01:15:13,720
trying to increase
the number of submissions from folks

1347
01:15:13,720 --> 01:15:15,320
from other parts of the world,

1348
01:15:15,320 --> 01:15:18,800
and not just like folks who were studying
other parts of the world, but, you know,

1349
01:15:18,800 --> 01:15:23,320
not just people studying sub-Saharan
Africa, sub-Saharan African scholars.

1350
01:15:24,480 --> 01:15:27,640
And there's there's no question to me
that my,

1351
01:15:29,440 --> 01:15:32,440
my understanding is enriched by that.

1352
01:15:33,000 --> 01:15:37,560
I'm curious to think about
what are the best ways for organizations

1353
01:15:37,560 --> 01:15:41,320
to take seriously
what it is to be an organization,

1354
01:15:41,800 --> 01:15:46,520
and how best to serve its members

1355
01:15:46,520 --> 01:15:50,760
and maybe the answer is
it needs to be all of those things.

1356
01:15:51,320 --> 01:15:54,520
Maybe, you know, maybe that old potluck
metaphor isn't a bad one,

1357
01:15:54,520 --> 01:15:57,520
that an organization
is an international organization.

1358
01:15:57,920 --> 01:16:01,160
But that doesn't mean that everybody
from every part of

1359
01:16:01,880 --> 01:16:05,400
the world will be able
to sample every dish because some

1360
01:16:06,040 --> 01:16:08,880
some dishes just won't work for you,
or some dishes

1361
01:16:08,880 --> 01:16:11,480
will be at the wrong time of day
or whatever.

1362
01:16:11,480 --> 01:16:14,040
I and as I say
that I really want to be cautious

1363
01:16:14,040 --> 01:16:17,200
about saying so, you know, we're
just going to be an American organization.

1364
01:16:17,200 --> 01:16:18,360
We're going to stay in America,
and we're going to

1365
01:16:18,360 --> 01:16:20,640
have American timezones,
and we're going to use.

1366
01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:22,280
Right? That's that's not

1367
01:16:23,320 --> 01:16:26,040
that doesn't
that doesn't feel right to me at all.

1368
01:16:26,040 --> 01:16:29,160
So, I'm aware that, you know,
I'm in the I'm inside

1369
01:16:29,160 --> 01:16:32,160
the country that birthed the thing.

1370
01:16:32,480 --> 01:16:35,040
And I think that organization
has different

1371
01:16:35,040 --> 01:16:38,920
obligations and responsibilities
than, say, the new,

1372
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:44,400
any any organization that would bring up
in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia.

1373
01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:47,400
Right. Like they could kind of

1374
01:16:47,400 --> 01:16:50,840
set their own rules and do their own thing
and really get themselves up

1375
01:16:50,840 --> 01:16:52,120
and running and not care

1376
01:16:52,120 --> 01:16:56,560
one jot about whether the, you know,
the times of year were convenient for,

1377
01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:59,800
U.S based scholar,
you know, we've got this thing,

1378
01:17:00,720 --> 01:17:05,160
but I don't think the same holds for a US
based scholar.

1379
01:17:05,160 --> 01:17:05,400
Right.

1380
01:17:05,400 --> 01:17:09,680
Like this
organization has to think about how

1381
01:17:10,160 --> 01:17:13,240
how do we responsibly

1382
01:17:14,760 --> 01:17:17,880
disperse the weight

1383
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:21,400
and power that the organization has.

1384
01:17:21,400 --> 01:17:24,360
So, how do we maybe host,

1385
01:17:25,360 --> 01:17:26,480
I don't know, host potlucks?

1386
01:17:26,480 --> 01:17:27,360
That's the wrong metaphor.

1387
01:17:27,360 --> 01:17:30,360
But how do we make sure
that potlucks are happening,

1388
01:17:31,120 --> 01:17:35,280
that serve and that invite and encourage

1389
01:17:35,280 --> 01:17:38,280
and and,

1390
01:17:39,240 --> 01:17:42,240
make space

1391
01:17:42,240 --> 01:17:45,240
for the emergence of.

1392
01:17:46,320 --> 01:17:47,400
Other aspects

1393
01:17:47,400 --> 01:17:50,680
of the organization, other organizations,
all of the above.

1394
01:17:50,920 --> 01:17:55,320
What's really the best way to be,
you know, the when you realize

1395
01:17:55,320 --> 01:17:58,320
you are the elephant in the living room,
how do you,

1396
01:17:59,280 --> 01:18:02,280
how do you how do you be a good elephant?

1397
01:18:02,640 --> 01:18:05,640
I don't know.

1398
01:18:06,840 --> 01:18:07,680
It seems like

1399
01:18:07,680 --> 01:18:11,880
there's still a lot more questions
than there are answers at this time,

1400
01:18:11,880 --> 01:18:15,960
but I do think the potluck
metaphor does does work.

1401
01:18:15,960 --> 01:18:18,960
It makes sense.

1402
01:18:20,000 --> 01:18:24,320
So, I guess to, to start wrapping up,

1403
01:18:25,680 --> 01:18:28,760
I guess my second to last question,

1404
01:18:30,520 --> 01:18:34,440
what are some of your own hopes
for food studies and the ASFS?

1405
01:18:35,760 --> 01:18:38,760
Or, what do you envision,

1406
01:18:39,080 --> 01:18:42,600
for food studies, the field
and ASFS as the organization,

1407
01:18:43,920 --> 01:18:46,920
40 years out.

1408
01:18:47,400 --> 01:18:50,400
Wow.

1409
01:18:53,960 --> 01:18:56,640
Well, I hope that it continues

1410
01:18:56,640 --> 01:18:59,640
to manage to be

1411
01:19:00,400 --> 01:19:02,880
challenging,

1412
01:19:02,880 --> 01:19:04,960
even as it will no doubt

1413
01:19:04,960 --> 01:19:07,960
become more and more institutionalized.

1414
01:19:08,160 --> 01:19:12,600
You know, having, been a part
of, women's studies now, gender

1415
01:19:12,600 --> 01:19:17,440
women's sexuality studies programs
since my early days in academe.

1416
01:19:17,880 --> 01:19:19,840
I'm aware of that.

1417
01:19:19,840 --> 01:19:20,920
It's hard.

1418
01:19:20,920 --> 01:19:24,040
It can be hard to keep being,

1419
01:19:24,400 --> 01:19:27,640
you know, a burr under the saddle
when suddenly you're part of the saddle.

1420
01:19:27,640 --> 01:19:28,880
Right.

1421
01:19:28,880 --> 01:19:31,400
How do you continue to,

1422
01:19:31,400 --> 01:19:33,360
excuse me, challenge academe

1423
01:19:33,360 --> 01:19:36,360
when you've come to be, institutionalized?

1424
01:19:36,360 --> 01:19:39,480
And I think where I'm most comfortable is,

1425
01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:42,480
being on the edges

1426
01:19:42,480 --> 01:19:45,480
of things, always wondering. Ooh.

1427
01:19:45,600 --> 01:19:51,160
So, I hope that Food Studies
continues to be that force in academe.

1428
01:19:52,600 --> 01:19:54,440
Along those same lines, you know,

1429
01:19:54,440 --> 01:19:57,800
along alongside
of your previous question about,

1430
01:20:00,600 --> 01:20:04,080
how does food studies
scholarship make visible

1431
01:20:04,080 --> 01:20:07,080
the lives and work of people

1432
01:20:07,080 --> 01:20:09,880
who actually make food?

1433
01:20:09,880 --> 01:20:15,720
I, I hope that AS that food studies and,

1434
01:20:17,120 --> 01:20:21,200
the organization as ASFS continue to.

1435
01:20:23,520 --> 01:20:26,800
Think about whether and how to

1436
01:20:32,960 --> 01:20:36,120
preserve that division between the academy

1437
01:20:36,120 --> 01:20:39,240
and the everyday world.

1438
01:20:40,920 --> 01:20:44,160
I love that when I go to
an ASFS conference,

1439
01:20:44,400 --> 01:20:47,760
I'm going to probably spend
a chunk of time,

1440
01:20:49,640 --> 01:20:50,800
in sessions

1441
01:20:50,800 --> 01:20:53,800
or in workshops or in field trips

1442
01:20:54,200 --> 01:21:00,600
where I'm being educated by folks
who are doing work in many other kinds

1443
01:21:00,600 --> 01:21:04,200
of settings,
whether that be nonprofits or,

1444
01:21:04,800 --> 01:21:07,520
governmental agencies or,

1445
01:21:07,520 --> 01:21:11,760
advocacy organizations,
or sometimes, you know, industries or,

1446
01:21:12,160 --> 01:21:16,680
you know, producers
regular old on the ground farmers and,

1447
01:21:17,760 --> 01:21:20,520
chefs doing

1448
01:21:20,520 --> 01:21:23,520
weird, like they're getting paid
for a regular old chef job.

1449
01:21:24,120 --> 01:21:28,120
And I think I would love
to see the organization continue

1450
01:21:28,120 --> 01:21:32,440
to really use that
as a way to think about, you know, maybe

1451
01:21:33,040 --> 01:21:36,880
revisioning that division
we were talking about before.

1452
01:21:36,880 --> 01:21:41,320
I mean, yes, there's a difference
between foodies and food scholars.

1453
01:21:42,960 --> 01:21:45,720
But maybe it isn't sliced
quite the way we think.

1454
01:21:45,720 --> 01:21:49,080
Like maybe a foodie is really a snooty,

1455
01:21:52,000 --> 01:21:53,040
and a food scholar

1456
01:21:53,040 --> 01:21:58,320
is anybody who's undertaking
some kind of serious exploration

1457
01:21:58,320 --> 01:22:02,400
of some aspect of food,
and that person might never publish

1458
01:22:02,400 --> 01:22:05,720
a darn paper and is,

1459
01:22:06,720 --> 01:22:10,320
writing grants to get their organization
to be able to do the kind of work

1460
01:22:11,000 --> 01:22:14,960
that they think needs to be done
to transform a food system.

1461
01:22:15,920 --> 01:22:17,560
I mean,

1462
01:22:17,560 --> 01:22:20,160
I think that would be a really exciting

1463
01:22:20,160 --> 01:22:23,160
accomplishment for food studies and for,

1464
01:22:24,520 --> 01:22:25,680
for the ASFS.

1465
01:22:25,680 --> 01:22:30,440
I mean, one of the things
this isn't a novel or,

1466
01:22:31,920 --> 01:22:34,920
or brand new part of ASFS, for sure.

1467
01:22:35,040 --> 01:22:38,200
But analyzes of the food system
and of its,

1468
01:22:40,120 --> 01:22:43,120
you know, of its brokenness.

1469
01:22:44,360 --> 01:22:46,320
I would love to think that they were,

1470
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:49,960
that they would have some kind
of a real impact on the way

1471
01:22:49,960 --> 01:22:53,320
in which our food system gets

1472
01:22:54,120 --> 01:22:58,040
dismantled and repurposed,
and hopefully not in a cataclysmic way

1473
01:22:58,040 --> 01:23:01,840
that involves removing fluoride
from all of the water and

1474
01:23:03,240 --> 01:23:06,240
suspending vaccines.

1475
01:23:07,400 --> 01:23:10,400
I would love to think that our scholarship

1476
01:23:11,520 --> 01:23:14,520
from wherever it's launched

1477
01:23:14,600 --> 01:23:16,240
would

1478
01:23:16,240 --> 01:23:19,200
genuinely

1479
01:23:19,200 --> 01:23:22,200
make change where it actually

1480
01:23:23,240 --> 01:23:26,360
has the most impact
on the most people's lives,

1481
01:23:28,520 --> 01:23:30,280
which is

1482
01:23:30,280 --> 01:23:34,240
where they come to the table, hopefully

1483
01:23:34,400 --> 01:23:37,400
at least a couple times a day.

1484
01:23:38,160 --> 01:23:39,560
You know, if food really is life,

1485
01:23:39,560 --> 01:23:42,560
if food is central to life,

1486
01:23:42,920 --> 01:23:46,200
our scholarship has to be helping that,

1487
01:23:47,200 --> 01:23:51,480
so I think one thing that ASFS could do
and that food studies could do,

1488
01:23:51,480 --> 01:23:55,920
and that frankly, I could do much more
intentionally is to think about

1489
01:23:57,080 --> 01:24:00,080
what does it look like to do scholarship

1490
01:24:00,120 --> 01:24:03,760
that matters to, you know, the folks
I grew up with

1491
01:24:04,440 --> 01:24:07,440
rather than the folks
that I'm surrounded with every day

1492
01:24:07,840 --> 01:24:10,840
in the Academy?

1493
01:24:11,640 --> 01:24:12,000
Yeah.

1494
01:24:12,000 --> 01:24:16,560
It just as a final thought in response
to what you're saying, I think about

1495
01:24:17,120 --> 01:24:20,120
some of the subjects I've been interested
in as like queer food.

1496
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:24,920
And I read about,
I think her name is Gabrielle Lenart,

1497
01:24:24,920 --> 01:24:29,480
who is a Master's student
who graduated from NYU in Food Studies

1498
01:24:29,880 --> 01:24:32,600
and started a whole foundation
around the idea

1499
01:24:32,600 --> 01:24:35,600
of, queer food,

1500
01:24:35,760 --> 01:24:40,200
and transforming the food system,
in creating community that way. And,

1501
01:24:42,000 --> 01:24:43,480
Wow. Yeah, yeah.

1502
01:24:43,480 --> 01:24:46,200
Wow. I need to look her up.
That sounds amazing.

1503
01:24:46,200 --> 01:24:48,440
I'll grab the name of her.

1504
01:24:48,440 --> 01:24:50,880
Maybe when we stop the recording.

1505
01:24:50,880 --> 01:24:52,680
Wow. That's amazing.

1506
01:24:52,680 --> 01:24:54,280
That's amazing.

1507
01:24:54,280 --> 01:24:57,240
I'm wondering if there's anything else,
that I haven't asked you

1508
01:24:57,240 --> 01:25:00,800
that you'd like to, to mention
before we conclude.

1509
01:25:02,360 --> 01:25:04,720
Well, I think just that,

1510
01:25:04,720 --> 01:25:08,600
you know, this organization
has been incredibly important to me.

1511
01:25:08,600 --> 01:25:13,160
And I've been, again, I, I,
I wish I could be more specific

1512
01:25:13,160 --> 01:25:15,320
about some of the work
that the organization has done.

1513
01:25:15,320 --> 01:25:18,120
I'm not I'm not,

1514
01:25:18,120 --> 01:25:21,120
very good at governance.

1515
01:25:21,680 --> 01:25:23,520
And so I've not been as attentive

1516
01:25:23,520 --> 01:25:26,520
to all of the,

1517
01:25:26,880 --> 01:25:30,600
all of the efforts that have been made by
people, like, I mean, I know one person

1518
01:25:30,600 --> 01:25:32,720
that was involved
in that work with Charlotte Biltekoff,

1519
01:25:34,440 --> 01:25:37,440
I I'm sorry about that.

1520
01:25:39,680 --> 01:25:42,440
But I am aware that this is a very

1521
01:25:42,440 --> 01:25:46,360
self, it feels to me like this is a very
self-reflective organization.

1522
01:25:46,360 --> 01:25:51,360
It feels to me like the fact
that it's, hosting these discussions

1523
01:25:51,920 --> 01:25:56,720
is an illustration of that, that it's
saying, what can we draw from that history

1524
01:25:56,720 --> 01:26:02,880
and what can we plan for a future
that places us more

1525
01:26:02,880 --> 01:26:07,360
in the realm of changemakers
rather than in the realm of,

1526
01:26:07,800 --> 01:26:12,880
you know, onlookers witnessing the world
going by?

1527
01:26:13,040 --> 01:26:14,760
I guess,

1528
01:26:14,760 --> 01:26:19,200
I mean, I'm I'm extremely grateful
for this organization, for making me.

1529
01:26:19,200 --> 01:26:23,760
Yeah, there are there are ways in which
I would say when I come to an ASFS meeting,

1530
01:26:23,760 --> 01:26:26,760
I can bring all my parts,
you know, as you say,

1531
01:26:27,680 --> 01:26:28,960
it's it's your people.

1532
01:26:28,960 --> 01:26:33,040
You know, I don't, you know, I'm
not always understood in every meeting.

1533
01:26:33,040 --> 01:26:33,600
Right. Like,

1534
01:26:35,280 --> 01:26:35,640
but I

1535
01:26:35,640 --> 01:26:38,640
know that there's someplace where I can be
my queer self, and I can be

1536
01:26:38,640 --> 01:26:42,840
my Northern Wisconsin self
and my farmer self, or not my farmer self.

1537
01:26:42,840 --> 01:26:45,960
Okay, my friend, grown ups would be like,
you are not a farmer, Lisa, but,

1538
01:26:46,600 --> 01:26:49,440
my agricultural roots self, right?

1539
01:26:49,440 --> 01:26:53,720
All of those parts and people,
people will know.

1540
01:26:53,720 --> 01:26:56,400
Well, I don't quite get that,
but I know that it.

1541
01:26:56,400 --> 01:26:58,200
I know that it belongs here somewhere.

1542
01:26:58,200 --> 01:27:00,320
Maybe I don't understand it,
but I don't wonder that

1543
01:27:00,320 --> 01:27:04,360
it's a wonder that it's here
and I think that is something

1544
01:27:04,360 --> 01:27:08,040
on which I hope the organization builds
and continues to build.

1545
01:27:08,440 --> 01:27:12,360
And I hope that we
who have, been coming for a while

1546
01:27:12,840 --> 01:27:18,000
are attentive and careful
to the ways in which we have to

1547
01:27:20,280 --> 01:27:24,240
notice the new voices that

1548
01:27:24,800 --> 01:27:29,120
and the new ways of doing things
and the new topics

1549
01:27:29,760 --> 01:27:32,480
that make us go,

1550
01:27:32,480 --> 01:27:35,480
because those are the very places
we need to show up.

1551
01:27:35,560 --> 01:27:39,840
And you can be sure, Joshua, that's
where I'm going at this next conference,

1552
01:27:40,200 --> 01:27:43,440
because I think, again,
back to complacency.

1553
01:27:43,840 --> 01:27:47,640
We as an organization, as as we have
people who have been around for a while,

1554
01:27:47,640 --> 01:27:51,440
we need to make sure that we are
the people who don't become

1555
01:27:52,440 --> 01:27:54,560
old and still think we are being,

1556
01:27:54,560 --> 01:27:58,440
you know, repressed or marginalized
for the work we are doing now.

1557
01:27:58,440 --> 01:28:01,720
We need to realize,
no, we're we're a part of the

1558
01:28:02,320 --> 01:28:05,120
we're a part of the old guard,
not the vanguard.

1559
01:28:05,120 --> 01:28:05,440
Right.

1560
01:28:05,440 --> 01:28:09,600
And we need to make sure that we continue
to notice

1561
01:28:09,600 --> 01:28:12,840
that we notice
the power that we now have and that we

1562
01:28:14,240 --> 01:28:16,480
notice the things we don't understand

1563
01:28:16,480 --> 01:28:19,480
and recognize why it's important
for us to understand them.

1564
01:28:19,480 --> 01:28:22,720
Boy, that wasn't very articulate at all,
but you understand what I'm saying there.

1565
01:28:23,080 --> 01:28:26,080
All right, listen, I. 
Was well, yeah.

1566
01:28:26,160 --> 01:28:29,160
Listen, is really what I'm saying.

1567
01:28:30,360 --> 01:28:32,560
Well, on behalf of the

1568
01:28:32,560 --> 01:28:36,680
of the ASFS 40 committee and ASFS,
I want to thank you for

1569
01:28:37,480 --> 01:28:41,880
taking the time to, to do this interview
and speak with me today.

1570
01:28:42,240 --> 01:28:43,440
You're welcome. 
Thank you for doing it, Joshua.

1571
01:28:43,440 --> 01:28:46,440
I appreciate the time that you are taking
and doing these.

1572
01:28:46,800 --> 01:28:48,520
Appreciate you. Thanks.
Thank you.