Alice Julier, Ph.D.

Logo: Chatham C
Professor, Food Studies Director, Center for Regional Agriculture Food and Transformation (CRAFT)
412-365-2473
Eden Hall Campus

Hometown:  Amherst, NH
Joined Chatham:  2010

ACADEMIC AREAS OF INTEREST

Sociology; Social Inequality; Race, Class, Gender; Culture and Consumption; Qualitative Methods; Food Discourse;Popular Culture and Media; Food Systems, Food Narratives; Disability Justice.

PERSONAL AREAS OF INTEREST

I have a dog and some cats.

BIOGRAPHY

Alice Julier is a sociologist whose writes about inequality, food, and everyday life. She is the Director of the Center for Regional Agriculture, Food, and Transformation (CRAFT) and the past president of Association for the Study of Food and Society. Her research focuses on materiality, social movements, domesticity, labor, consumption, and inequality in food systems. She has written on topics ranging from masculinities and food (“Mapping Men onto the Menu,”), poverty and obesity ( “The Political Economy of Obesity,”) history ( “Julia at Smith”) and food systems (“Hiding Race and Class in the Discourse of Commercial Food.”) Her first book, Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality, focuses on commensality, gender, and race. She is the co-editor of the fourth edition of Food and Culture: A Reader, the most widely used food studies textbook. Prior research include the feminist women's health organizations, gender, race, and leadership in the US Civil Rights Movement, and critical social theory. These interests center on how people navigate practice and politics, activism and everyday life. At CRAFT, her focus is on research and outreach that creates the conditions for a new food economy and cultural equity.

EDUCATION
  • Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA)
  • M.A. in Sociology, University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA)
  • B.A. in Sociology, Brandeis University (Waltham, MA)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
AWARDS
  • Buhl Professorship, 2013
  • Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title for Eating Together: Food Friendship, and Inequality, 2014
  • Excellence in Classroom Practice Citation, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Nashville, TN
  • Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Massachusetts
ORGANIZATIONS 
ACHIEVEMENTS 
  • Board member, Food, Culture, and Society 2004 - present
  • Board member, Food and Foodways: explorations in the history and culture of human nourishment 2004 - present
  • President, Association for the Study of Food and Society. 2003–2006 
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS 
  • “Food and Place: Marketing the Local, Gentrifying the Neighborhood” Keynote speech at Texas Tech Humanities Center Food and.. series. Lubbock, TX October, 2017
  • “The Moral Entrepreneurship of Cooks.” Keynote speech and panel participant, 14th Annual Belmont Humanities Symposium Nashville TN. October 2015
  • “The Future of Food Studies is Intersectional.” Inaugural Address/Keynote for the Perugia Food and Sustainability Studies Conference, Umbra Institute, Perugia Italy May 2017
  • The Next Portland;” cities, racialization, and food labor.” American Anthropology Association meetings, Washington DC, Fall 2017
  • Home Cooking as a Social Problem: From Family Meals to Food Waste, Eastern Sociological Society conference; Philadelphia, PA March 2017
  • Engaging Food as a Means of Resistance; Beyond Intersectionality: New Directions in the Sociology of Food Eastern Sociological Society conference, Philadelphia, PA March 2017
  • Discussant, Territory, Local Food Production, and Resistance and Food Masculinities: Practices, Discourses, and Representations Two panels at the Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society joint conference (ASFS/AFHVS), Pasedena, CA June 2017.
  • Engaging Food as a Means of Resistance; Beyond Intersectionality: New Directions in the Sociology of Food Eastern Sociological Society conference, Philadelphia, PA March 2017
  • Masculinities and kitchen practices, beyond gender Feminist Food Studies Panel 2 Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society joint conference (ASFS/AFHVS), Toronto 2016.
  • Of Meat and Men: Doing Masculinity and Critiquing the Modern Food System” Eastern Sociological Society meetings New York City March 2015.
  • “Public, Private, Commercial, or Home Cooked: Boundaries and Slippage in Commensality” American Anthropological Association, Chicago, IL November 2013
  • “Neighborhood, Family, and Food: Collective Memory and Ethnic-Racial Identity” paper at Eastern Sociological Society annual meeting NYC, February 2012
  • “Obesity Discourses, Sustainability, and the Rhetoric of Resistance” paper at 6th Interdisciplinary and Multicultural Conference on Food and Representations University of Texas at San Antonio Feb. 25th, 2010
  • Eat These Words: A Roundtable on Intellectual Work and Public Engagement organizer and moderator at Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society Conference Penn State University, June 2009
  • Things Taste Better in Small Houses: Food, Hospitality, and Domestic Space.” Domestic Foodscapes: Towards Mindful Eating, Concordia University (co-sponsored by the Cornell University School of Hospitality). March 2008