Instructors

Our multidisciplinary program welcomes a wide variety of scholars and working professionals as instructors each semester. Most teach in person, while others enrich the offerings of the Gastronomy program through online courses. The list below represents recent and coming semesters.

Professor Carole Counihan in her Food Activism course. Photo by Annaliese DeNooyer.

KEN ALBALA, PhD
Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He is the author of many books including Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, Beans: A History (winner of the 2008 International Association of Culinary Professionals Jane Grigson Award), Pancake and the forthcoming World Cuisines, written with the Culinary Institute of America. Albala is also editor of three food series for Greenwood Press with 29 volumes in print and has recently completed editing the four-volume Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia. Albala is also co-editor of the journal Food, Culture and Society. He is currently researching a history of theological controversies surrounding fasting in the Reformation Era, and has also co-authored a cookbook for Penguin/Perigee called The Lost Art of Real Cooking. The sequel to this is in the works, provisionally titled The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home. Visit his blog here.

Albala teaches Survey of the History of Food (ML 622).

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MARY BEAUDRY, PhD
Mary Beaudry is Professor of Archaeology, Anthropology and Gastronomy at Boston University. Her food-related research interests involve the archaeology of historical households and homelots. Beaudry’s current field projects include investigations at several historical home sites in Massachusetts and at the colonial William Carr Estate at Little Bay, Montserrat, West Indies.

Beaudry teaches Pots and Pans (ML 612).

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WARREN BELASCO, PhD
Warren Belasco is Professor of American Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is the author of several books on food culture and food studies, the most recent of which is Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart. His research interests include food, future studies and cultural history, and he is the advisory editor of the journal Food, Culture and Society.

Belasco teaches The Many Meanings of Meat (ML 711).
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RACHEL E. BLACK, PhD
Rachel E. Black is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Gastronomy at Boston University. Dr. Black’s work focuses on the anthropology of food and some of her recent research includes an ethnography of open-air markets, a project on wine production and a course on urban agriculture. Rachel Black is the associate editor of Food and Foodways and vice-president of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. She is editor of Alcohol in Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010), co-editor of Wine and Culture: Vineyard to Glass (forthcoming 2013) and Porta Palazzo: The Anthropology of an Italian Market (2012).

Dr. Black is the coordinator for the Gastronomy program, and she teaches Food Anthropology (ML 641), Introduction to Gastronomy: Theory and Methodology (ML 701), Food and the Senses (ML 715), Urban Agriculture (ML 714) and Culture & Cuisine: Québec (ML 639).

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SANDY BLOCK, MW
Sandy Block is a certified Master of Wine (one of only 279 in the world, and one of two MWs teaching in our Wine Studies program). He is Vice President of Beverage Operations for Legal Seafoods. He is the Wine Editor for The Improper Bostonian, and he is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Cheers Magazine, the Executive Symposium Committee of Sante Magazine and the Executive Board of Boston University’s Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center.

Block teaches History of Wine (ML 632) in the Gastronomy program. In the Wine Studies program, he teaches Levels 1 and 2 (ML 651 and 652) and is involved with Levels 3 and 4 (ML 653 and 654).
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KYRI CLAFLIN, PhD

Kyri Claflin (kclaflin@bu.edu) is a Gastronomy lecturer at Metropolitan College. She recently co-edited the volume Writing Food History: A Global Perspective (2012) with Peter Scholliers. Dr. Claflin is the author of numerous articles including ‘La Villette: The City of Blood,1867-1914′ in Meat, Modernity and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (2008) and ‘Les Halles and the Moral Market: Frigophobia Strikes in the Belly of Paris,’ in the Oxford Symposium volume Food & Morality (2008).

Claflin teaches A Survey of the History of Food (ML 622) and Culture and Cuisine: France (ML 631)

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CAROLE COUNIHAN, PhD
Carole Counihan is Professor of Anthropology at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. She has been active in anthropology, gender, and food studies for over two decades and has conducted ethnographic research in Sardinia and Florence, as well as in the United States. She is the editor-in-chief of the journal Food and Foodways, and is the author of several books on food culture and food anthropology, the most recent of which is A Tortilla is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Her newest research project is on food activism in Italian chapters of the Slow Food movement.

Professor Counihan teaches Food Anthropology (ML 641), Special Topics: Food Activism (ML 722), and Food and Ethnography (ML 642).
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NETTA DAVIS
Netta Davis works for Harvard University’s Gutman Library and is a Gastronomy lecturer at Boston University. She holds a Master of Arts in American Studies from BU.

Davis teaches Introduction to Gastronomy: Theory and Methodology (ML 701) and Experiencing Food Through the Senses (ML 715).

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THOMAS GLICK, PhD
Biography coming soon.

Professor Glick teaches Readings in Food History (ML 633).

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IHSAN GURDAL
Ihsan Gurdal is the owner of Formaggio Kitchen, one of the top gourmet food retailers in the country. The Cambridge institution stocks artisan cheeses from around the world, imported and house-cured meats, and specialty grocery items. Since taking ownership of the store in 1992, Gurdal has worked extensively with cheese makers and affineurs throughout the U.S. and Europe. His efforts support agricultural artisans and have brought many rare and unique cheeses into his shop.

Gurdal teaches Artisan Cheeses of the World (ML 705).
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SHERYL JULIAN
Sheryl Julian is the Food Editor for the Boston Globe, and she is the author of multiple cookbooks, the most recent of which is The New Boston Globe Cookbook: More Than 200 Classic New England Recipes, From Clam Chowder to Pumpkin Pie.

Julian teaches Food Writing for Print Media (ML 681).

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ELLEN MESSER, PhD
Ellen Messer is an anthropologist with faculty affiliations at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and Brandeis University’s Heller School of Social Research and Policy. Her research interests include cross-cultural perspectives on human right to food; biocultural determinants of food and nutrition intake; sustainable food systems (with special emphasis on the roles of NGOs); impacts of agrobiotechnology on hunger; and cultural history of nutrition, agriculture, food science. She is the author/co-author of several books on food policy, including Who’s Hungry? And How Do We Know?: Food Shortage, Poverty and Deprivation (United Nations Free Press, 1998).

Messer teaches Food Policy and Food Systems (ML 720) and US Food Policy and Culture (ML 721).

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BILL NESTO, MW
Bill Nesto is a certified Master of Wine (one of only 279 in the world, and one of two MWs teaching in our Wine Studies program). He is a lecturer in the Gastronomy program, and an instructor for the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University. He speaks regularly at wine events around Boston and throughout the world, and is a Contributing Editor to Sante Magazine, a regular contributor to Massachusetts Beverage Business, and has written for Gastronomica.

Bill Nesto teaches Wine Studies Level 1 (ML 651), Level 2 (ML 652), Level 3 (ML 653), and Level 4 (ML 654).

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VANESSA ODDO, MPH

Vanessa Oddo is a researcher with expertise in public health nutrition. She received her master’s degree in public health (MPH) from Tufts University. Currently, Ms. Oddo is a Research Analyst at Mathematica Policy Research, an independent policy research firm whose studies and analysis have yielded information to guide decisions in wide-ranging policy areas, including health, nutrition, and international development. She is interested in employing mixed methods to assess how social conditions affect food insecurity and malnutrition and emerging issues in the global obesity epidemic, including the double burden of malnutrition.

Vanessa Oddo teaches Nutrition and Diet: Why What You Eat Matters (ML 691).

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POTTER PALMER, PhD
Potter Palmer attained his Ph.D. in Critical Studies from the Department of Film and Television at the UCLA. He is also a graduate of the Gastronomy Program at BU. His research interests include cooking and masculinity, representations of food in visual media, and food in film. Before teaching at BU, Potter worked at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the field of computers and pedagogy. His favorite pastime is cooking mostly-nutritious food for his wife and daughter.

Palmer teaches Food and the Visual Arts (ML 671) and A Survey of Food and Film (ML 673).

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KAREN PEPPER, PhD

Karen Pepper studied history at the University of California, Berkeley (A.B.); history of science at San Francisco State University (M.A.); microbiology at the University of Paris (Ph.D.); and creative writing at Bennington College (M.F.A.). She briefly worked as a substantive editor at Gastronomica. She currently teaches scientific writing at M.I.T. and Children’s Hospital and first-year college writing at Boston University (Source and Sorcery: All about Food). She presented “Hot Sausage and Mustard: Putting Food Studies on the Undergraduate Menu” at the 2011 meeting of the American Association of University Professors. And she loves her courses in the Gastronomy Program.

Pepper teaches the Gastronomy Writing Workshop, as well as special topics, including The Big Fat Fat Controversy and Reading & Writing the Food Memoir.

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SARAH T. PHILLIPS, PhD

Sarah Phillips is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Undergraduate Studies. To view a faculty profile visit http://www.bu.edu/history/faculty/sarah-t-phillips/

Prof. Phillips teaches Agricultural History (ML 713)

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JONATHAN RIBNER, PhD
Jonathan Ribner is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Admissions in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. A specialist in European painting and sculpture of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Professor Ribner has published on the art of France and England in relation to the history of politics, law, literature, religion, and public health. Currently researching affinities between national traditions of art and gastronomy, he is the author of Broken Tablets: The Cult of the Law in French Art from David to Delacroix (University of California Press, 1993).

Prof. Ribner teaches Art and Food (ML 672).

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MERRY WHITE, PhD

Merry White is Professor of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, with specialties in Japanese studies, in food, and in travel. A caterer before she entered graduate school, she also wrote two cookbooks, one of which, first published in the mid 1970s, is soon to be republished by Princeton University Press. Her most recent publication is the book “Coffee Life in Japan” which keeps her on the road and in cafes on book tours. The many meanings of “work” in food, from domestic to artisanal to industrial, is her next Japan-based research project. Her courses include “Food, Culture and Social Change” and a summer course, “Eat Boston” – an exploration of Boston’s food cultures through a social history of geography, immigration and neighborhood identity.