Public History and the Food Movement – Adding the Missing Ingredient

Headed to AASLH2019

We’re excited to be part of the program for the 2019 American Association for State and Local History conference in Philadelphia this week! On Thursday afternoon from 4-5:15 pm we’ll be joining our colleague Rebecca Shrum from Indianapolis for a book discussion focusing on Michelle’s Interpreting Food at Museums and Historic Sites and our co-authored book. We do not know if we will be eating cheese steaks.

The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, a new digital project that we’re also excited to have contributed to, will be making its debut at the conference. More about the creation of the handbook here.

Two great Mass. farm projects for January

Cathy will be leading a session called “Histories of Health Foods: Learning from the Past” at the 32nd Annual NOFAMass Winter Conference in Worcester on Saturday, Jan 12, 2019. Here’s the full program!

And Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester, MA is in the midst of a fundraising campaign to build a new all-seasons barn (see drawing above) for its great programming. They’re working on a challenge in January to match $250,000 given by a generous donor. Cathy is looking forward to working with them in future on some public history projects that illuminate suburban/urban food and farm relationships around Boston over the past 150 years. It’s a wonderful site, and well worth supporting!

Wright-Locke Farm event Aug 22, 2018

Wright-Locke Farm grows vegetables, fruits, and flowers on a miraculously-preserved 20 acres in Boston’s suburbs.

Join Cathy for an evening at the fabulous Wright-Locke Farm in Wincester, MA to talk about how the history of farming–and especially of this very old New England farm–can help us rethink and rescale our present-day food system. The talk starts at 7:30 and is free, but they do ask that people RSVP so they can get an approximate head-count beforehand. Here’s the poster with more info.

Wright-Locke is a busy and beautiful little farm at the western edge–historically the heart of this town’s farming activities–of one of Boston’s western suburbs. I say “little” because it’s small by a lot of farm standards even in New England, but it actually comprises 20 acres which is nothing short of a miracle given the commercial value of real estate in this part of the region. They’ve documented their own history, including the story of how this much open farmland was protected by the town and local advocates, here.

Books are here!

We’re excited to announce that Public History and the Food Movement is now available!

To celebrate, we’ve added a couple of new things to this website: some short excerpts from our interviews with eight of our favorite practitioners in the worlds of food and farm history and organizing, as well as a PDF of the Introduction, which we hope will whet your appetite for reading the rest of the book.

History as the missing ingredient

Welcome to the website for Michelle Moon and Cathy Stanton’s new book Public History and the Food System: Adding the Missing Ingredient, due to be published by Routledge in early fall 2017.

Return here for updates, including a sample chapter, excerpts from the practitioner interviews that are included in the book, and space for networking with others who are interested in moving toward engaged and innovative modes of interpreting food and farming.

BTW, the beautiful image above, which appears on the cover of the book, was taken by photographer Jeremy Mundth. It shows an outdoor art piece entitled “Cribs,” created by artist Brenda Baker for the Wormfarm Institute‘s Farm/Art DTour at its annual Fermentation Fest in Wisconsin.