Outreach
Work in Local Food Systems
I am trained and experienced as a Food Studies academic, but did you know I have had a number of other jobs in local food systems?
Local Food
Tamil Nadu
Our Drama, Our Food
Susan Seizer and I co-authored a paper using our two specialty foci to discuss the socio-linguistic significance of the inclusive "we" and "our" in Tamil culture.
Gender
Country Chicken, Globalization and Discourse
I shared research on young women college students in Tamil Nadu and their views on global and local food systems at the Transecting Healthy and Sustainable Food in the Asia-Pacific Workshop, at Yale-National University of Singapore, in August 2018.
Outreach
Earth Eats Radio Show
My colleague Leigh Bush and I collaborated with current and former Earth Eats hosts and production staff to conduct interviews with Food Studies scholars and other food experts as guest segments. This NPR show is based at WFIU in Bloomington, IN.
Presentations
Our Madurai, Our Food
Multiple Ideologies in Local and Traditional Food Advocacy in Tamil Nadu, India
Tamil Nadu
Transforming Millets: Strategies and Struggles in Changing Taste in Madurai
Drawing on ethnographic evidence collected through field research in and around the city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, this paper explores how the particularities of Tamil history and cultural values shape the current confused status of millets there.
Presentations
Between Meals and Meanings
> Notes on Snack Culture in South India Reference Chera, Madeline. 2015. “Between Meals and Meanings: Notes on Snack Culture in South India.” Paper presented in "Place, Consumption, and Health," at the Association for the Study of Food and Society and Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society joint
Tamil Nadu
Environmentalist Food Localization and Ethnographic Accounts of Tamil Hindu Place-Based Identities
This paper presents Hindu philosophy as the foundation for an environmentalist ethics conducive to local food systems and the host of social, personal, and environmental benefits that local food advocates associate with those systems.
Presentations
Millet Madness
> Health in Heritage or Food to Leave in the Past? Reference Chera, Madeline. 2014. “Millet Madness: Health in Heritage or Food to Leave in the Past?” Paper presented in “Less Palatable, Still Valuable: Taste, Agrobiodiversity, and Culinary Heritage,” Executive Session, at the American Anthropological Association 113th Annual Meeting, Washington,
Food Studies
Valuing Variety: Agrobiodiversity Conservation
The course focused on the topic of agricultural biodiversity conservation, and so was related to my focus areas of food and the environment.
Publications
Ideologies of Fermented Foods
Abstract Anthropologists have long noted that identification of organic materials as edible is quite culturally contingent, and this variability applies all the more to fermented foods, which have been modified by the activities of micro-organisms. Fermented foods bear multiple meanings, even within the Euro-American context. One position stems from the
Local Food
FILM REVIEW | Eating Alaska
This film review discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the food systems documentary Eating Alaska as a pedagogical tool and an ethnographic work.