Related Guides
Exhibit Sources: Primary Sources
- AM Explorer This link opens in a new window AM Explorer is a cross-collection search of the entire corpus of Adam Matthew's digitized arts and cultural heritage material in subjects including Area Studies, Cultural Studies, Empire and Globalism, Ethnic Studies, Gender and Sexuality, History, Politics, Literature, Theatre, and War and Conflict.
- Food and Drink in History (AM Explorer) From feast to famine, explore primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production.
- Global and Ethnic Cuisines (Food and Drink in History) This theme encompasses cuisines from outside Britain and the United States and includes cookbooks published for a home readership – those that have indigenous recipes or encourage the use of local ingredients and produce – as well as those intended to introduce global cuisines to a new market. These documents give an insight into the culinary lives of a range of ethnic and religious groups from all around the globe, as they migrate, evolve, meet with others and give rise to new
- Food, Race and Ethnicity (Food and Drink in History) Steeped in tradition and bound by ties of culture and community, food is often seen as central to one’s racial or ethnic identity. This theme includes cookbooks focused on the cuisines of different ethnic or national groups, as well as documents such as marketing reports and consumer studies which aim to analyse the behaviours and habits of these groups and adapt business strategies accordingly.
- J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America (AM Explorer) The J. Walter Thompson Company Archive documents the history, operation, policies and accomplishments of one of the world's largest and oldest advertising firms. The papers here reveal many aspects of twentieth-century cultural, social, business, marketing, consumer and economic history while investigating the human psyche.
- Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration & Cultural Exchange (AM Explorer) This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.
Exhibit Sources: Podcasts
- AnthroDish AnthroDish is a weekly podcast about the connections between food, culture, and identity through an anthropological lens. Each week a new guest joins me to discuss a food-related topic that relates to their expertise or experience.
- Gravy Podcast (Southern Foodways Alliance) Gravy is our journal and podcast duo of original narratives that are fresh, unexpected, and thought-provoking.
- The Racist Sandwich Podcast The Racist Sandwich podcast serves up a perspective that you don’t hear often: that both food and the ways we consume, create, and interpret it can be political. From discussions about racism in food photography to interviews with chefs of color about their experiences in the restaurant world, hosts Soleil Ho and Zahir Janmohamed hash out a diverse range of topics with special guests on each episode.
- Heritage Radio Network HRN is the world’s pioneer food radio station. The studio broadcasts live from two recycled shipping containers inside Roberta’s Pizza, an innovative restaurant at the epicenter of Brooklyn’s culinary renaissance.
- El Paso Food Voices El Paso Food Voices is a collection of food stories gathered from home cooks, professional chefs, restaurant owners, community educators, and others from across El Paso, Texas. These stories bring to life the area’s mosaic flavors of its culinary landscape. People’s stories are filled with history, culture, and politics that challenge us to re-think our relationships with food.
- Toasted Sister Podcast After contact, Indigenous foodways and knowledge were devastated, destroyed and replaced with foods that are far from the people. So today, I’m talking to Native chefs and foodies about what Indigenous cuisine is, where it comes from, where it’s headed and how it’s used to connect them and their people to their origins and traditions.
- The Sporkful Since launching in 2010, The Sporkful has won the James Beard Award, Webby Award, and Saveur Award for Best Food Podcast. Each week on the show, we use humor and humanity to approach food from many angles, including science, history, race, culture, economics, and lengthy debates on the best way to layer peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
Exhibit Sources: Films
Search for Films
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Films: Southern Foodways Alliance SFA films document the lives of foodways practitioners, including cooks, farmers, waiters, and a wide range of other folk.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
Browse Films
- Anatomy of a Springroll (streaming, Academic Video Online) "Food is everyone's first language," says Paul Kwan, the Vietnamese-born immigrant who fashioned this film out of the rich sensory memories of his childhood. He tells his story of finding a new life in America while maintaining his cultural connection through cooking, eating and sharing the rich and varied food of his native land.
- Pins and Noodles (streaming, Academic Video Online) Co-director Paul Kwan (Anatomy of A Springroll) once again takes us on a journey back to his roots, this time in a search to regain his health. Food, which was the love of his life and nourished both his palate and his cultural roots, became the source of major discomfort. Allergies to shellfish and other rich, spicy foods provoked uncomfortable reactions.
- A Wok in Progress (streaming, Academic Video Online) The third film in the Springroll Trilogy interweaves a love of food with cultural and psychic survival. Paul Kwan, who was uprooted from his family and native country by the fall of Saigon, finds comfort in recreating his native foods in San Francisco, his new home
- Food Music Feelings: Identity in an Italian Market (Academic Video Online) This documentary, by ethnographer Jay Sokolovsky, is about identity in an Italian market [in New York]
- Soul Food Junkies (streaming, Kanopy) Award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt offers a fascinating exploration of the soul food tradition, its relevance to black cultural identity, and its continuing popularity despite the known dangers of high-fat, high-calorie diets. Inspired by his father's lifelong love affair with soul food even in the face of a life-threatening health crisis, Hurt discovers that the relationship between African-Americans and dishes like ribs, grits, and fried chicken is deep-rooted and culturally based. At the same time, he moves beyond matters of culture and individual taste to show how the economics of the food industry have combined with socioeconomic conditions in predominantly black neighborhoods to dramatically limit food choices
- Makolet: A Middle Eastern Grocery in Brooklyn (streaming, Academic Video Online) This upbeat documentary depicts the social space of a kosher Middle Eastern grocery store in the traditionally Sephardic section of Brooklyn. Serving the local Syrian Jewish clientele, it has now also become a kind of social headquarters for expatriate Israelis as well as other Middle Eastern customers.
- Meat: A Look at the Production of Consumer Meat Products (streaming, Kanopy) MEAT traces the process through which cattle and sheep become consumer goods. It depicts the processing and transportation of meat products by a highly automated packing plant, illustrating important points and problems in the area of production, transportation, logistics, equipment design, time-motion study, and labor management.
Exhibit Sources: Images
- Associated Press Images Collection This link opens in a new window Associated Press Images Collection is a searchable collection of recent and historical photos from the Associated Press, plus AP graphics, articles, and brief sound clips.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new window ARTstor is a database of images from museums, artists, libraries, colleges and universities, scholars, private collections, and photo archives available for teaching, education, and scholarship, with all images cleared for educational use.
- Digital Commonwealth: Massachusetts Collections Online This site provides access to photographs, manuscripts, books, audio recordings, and other materials of historical interest that have been digitized and made available by members of Digital Commonwealth, a statewide consortium of libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies from across Massachusetts.
- National Agricultural Library, USDA Pomological Watercolor Digital Collection The USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection documents new fruit and nut varieties, and specimens introduced by USDA plant explorers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The plant specimens represented by these artworks originated in 29 countries and 51 states and territories in the U.S. There are 7,497 watercolor paintings, 87 line drawings, and 79 wax models created by approximately 21 artists.
- National Agricultural Library, Historical Dietary Guidance Digital Collection The USDA National Agricultural Library's new online Historical Dietary Guidance Digital Collection houses more than 900 historical diet and nutrition publications issued by the U.S. Government over past 100 years.
- Ad*Access The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
- Little Cookbooks: the Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Culinary Collection Little Cookbooks contains thousands of food and cookery related publications produced primarily by companies in the United States from the late nineteenth century up to the present. The collection provides a rich resource to study the evolution and history of advertising, food products, individual companies, technology, food preparation, and food production.
- Culinary Arts Collection Choose more options “contains images”
- Gastronomica Gastronomica is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, international journal publishing critical, translational studies on food.
- Europeana Collections Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for. Includes thematic collections on art, fashion, music, photography and World War I.
- Europeana Collections: Art From the cave painters of Altamira to the Surrealists, from ancient Roman sculpture to modern design, Europeana Art introduces you to artists and artworks from across the whole of Europe. Explore 1,286,654 artworks from European collections.
- Free Food-Related Photo Sources Following are twelves sources that provide free photos, provided you follow the guidelines given with them. Even, if the source doesn’t ask for a specific credit line, give some type of citation as a courtesy. Occasionally, these sites may include a copyrighted photo; check the information by the photo to assure you can use it.
