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About

by Emily Contois

My research explores the connections between food, the body, health, and identities in contemporary U.S. media and popular culture. I'm Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa, and my current book project is Diners, Dudes and Diets: Gender and Power in U.S. Food Culture and Media with UNC Press. I am also co-editing Food and Instagram: Identity, Influence & Resistance.

July 3, 2016
Featured

Top Posts

August 1, 2019

Food Media Syllabus

Through historic cookbooks, Instagram, and 30+ virtual guests, "Food Media" critically considers our global food system through media.

by Emily Contois
Comments 3
February 18, 2019

CFP—You Are What You Post: Food and Instagram

Emily Contois and Zenia Kish welcome chapter proposals on the topic of food and Instagram for an edited collection....

by Emily Contois
Comments 4
September 11, 2017

Eating Disorders, Food Studies & Me

Over the last decade, I've researched dieting and weight loss in U.S. culture, but I've rarely written about the...

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
February 8, 2017

40 Food Studies Books for Black History Month

Food studies books addressing African American foodways represent a rich, important, and growing area of food studies research. Here's...

by Emily Contois
Comment 1

Publication Updates

A Bit from the Dissertation: Acknowledgements + Abstract

Published by Emily Contois

A few words of summary and thanks from my dissertation, "The Dudification of Diet: Food Masculinities in Twenty-First-Century America."

March 30, 2018
Comments 0
publications

“Lose Like a Man:” Gender & the Constraints of Self-Making in Weight Watchers Online

Published by Emily Contois

I argue that Weight Watchers constructs gender by upholding strict binaries and making limited types of self available to women and men through depictions of food, the body, and...

March 31, 2017
Comments 0
publications

Healthy Food Blogs: Creating New Nutrition Knowledge at the Crossroads of Science, Foodie Lifestyle & Gender Identities

Published by Emily Contois

I'm delighted to share a recent publication, which considers the knowledge and hyper-feminine identities produced in a sample of healthy food blogs.

February 23, 2017
Comment 1
publications

He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich:’ Advertising Australia’s National Food in the United States, 1968-1988

Published by Emily Contois

My recently published article uses Vegemite as a case study to examine the cultural contexts in which advertising fails and triumphs, as well as the marketing process by which...

October 24, 2016
Comments 0
publications

Thoughts on Public Scholarship

July 31, 2018

Why I’m Still Blogging After 6 Years & Being Trolled

I blog as an academic for a number of reasons, but this year I had some new reflecting to...

by Emily Contois
Comment 1
July 11, 2017

Celebrating 5 Years Blogging & Why Other Academics Should Too

The blog is turning five! Here's five more reasons why I blog, and why other academics should too.

by Emily Contois
Comments 4
April 12, 2016

Social Media Lessons for Aspiring Public Intellectuals

I attended several fascinating panels at the 2016 OAH Annual Meeting here in Providence this past weekend (check out #OAH2016 on Twitter), and also...

by Emily Contois
Comments 2
August 6, 2014

Cheers & Tears: 5 More Reasons for Academics to Blog

This summer marks my second year of blogging, so I thought I’d celebrate by adding to the five lessons I...

by Emily Contois
Comments 9

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Academic Resources

November 1, 2018

Announcing a New Food History Fellowship at the University of...

June 14, 2016

Publishing in Food Studies Journals: An Index

June 24, 2014

24 Conference Tips

March 5, 2014

‘Graduate School Will Kill You’ and Other 18th...

October 1, 2013

How to Write a Statement of Purpose

September 16, 2013

4 Steps to Find the Right PhD Program for You, Food Studies or...

June 24, 2013

Graduate Food Studies Programs: A List

Exhibit: Food System History

"Making the Modern American Food System: An Online Exhibit" depicts the U.S food system's history -- how it came to be, who the key players were, and how we might imagine a future of food.

Instagram

Our final meal and class selfie in #foodxmedia. I’m going to miss this amazing group of students so much! Blog post coming soon on the top 10 things we learned together this semester. #vibe
Very grateful that I felt well enough this morning to walk @raven_puppie and spend a little time in my office grading my #foodxmedia students’ awesome essays. This new sweatshirt seemed the right way to celebrate.
There are few things I love more than a @drdarcydraws care package 💗 but I’m also hugely relieved my MRI didn’t indicate any of the terrible possibilities we’d worried for. #onward
Dear Universe: Please let this test reveal something useful, but not really terrible. Also, more hospitals should have Art Deco detailing.
So happy to celebrate the last day of class for Principles of Advertising: History, Culture & Critique alongside our first day’s brainstorming of what advertising is and why it’s worth studying. A lot of this is at the heart of my book, so I love getting to think through these questions with my #utulsa students.
Doctor’s office art to mark today. I feel vindicated (but also angry and a bit heartbroken) to have a provider tell me that if I were a man, I would have been referred for additional tests years ago. Instead, I’ve been a young, healthy-until-I’m-not woman whose symptoms were dismissed by multiple doctors for ten straight years. Here’s hoping that changes now. 💪

Spotlight

Why My Dude Food Research Matters

by Emily Contois

I'm thrilled to share a recording of my talk, "Dude Food: Gender and Health in U.S. Popular Culture," which is based on my dissertation and was presented at the Brown University Graduate School 2016 event "Research Matters!" This event challenged me to distill my dissertation into a crisp 5-minute talk intended for an informed, but interdisciplinary audience. It also made me grapple with the question of why my research matters. A challenge for any scholar, this can feel like a loaded question in food studies—especially for someone like me, studying dude food across media forms...

November 15, 2016
Comment 1
Featured-2

Thoughts On Teaching

December 14, 2019

Our Food Media Top 10

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching Food Media at The University of Tulsa this semester. The majority of my twelve students...

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
September 20, 2019

For My Students: My First 10 “Bad” Instagram Posts

My students' Instagram lives made me reflect on mine, my first posts, and who I want to be on...

by Emily Contois
Comments 2
August 1, 2019

Food Media Syllabus

Through historic cookbooks, Instagram, and 30+ virtual guests, "Food Media" critically considers our global food system through media.

by Emily Contois
Comments 3
May 10, 2019

Teaching the Unruly Unessay

My students and I tested out unessays this semester, an assignment I now highly recommend.

by Emily Contois
Comment 1
December 11, 2018

Teaching with Infographics

My students translated 1500-word essays into infographics. I share details for instructors interested to try a similar assignment.

by Emily Contois
Comments 3
December 10, 2018

On Teaching “Persuasive Influences in America” for the First Time

I reflect on what my students and I read, wrote, and learned in a course on persuasion in the...

by Emily Contois
Comments 3
November 9, 2018

A Student Interview on Media Studies + Food Studies

I chatted with a first year TU student about researching and teaching in media studies and food studies.

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
April 18, 2018

Presenting My Students’ Final Project: Defining American Food

I'm pleased to share the restaurant reviews and interviews my Brown students wrote, working to define American food.

by Emily Contois
Comments 0

Conference & Event Write-ups

Thinking Through Food and MediaA panel synopsis on the intersection of food studies & media studies that explores...July 10, 2019

ASFS 2019 at University of Alaska Anchorage + a Call to ActionA 2019 ASFS conference debrief, plus why the Alaska governor's 41% cut to the...July 8, 2019

Reflecting on the Southern Foodways Alliance & Bentonville, ArkansasThe SFA Summer Field Trip explored the food culture of Bentonville, Arkansas, a booming...June 18, 2019

Pondering & Archiving #foodstudies18: AFHVS/ASFS Conference at UW-MadisonRead on for a debrief of the 2018 meeting of ASFS with AFHVS at...June 18, 2018

9 Writing Productivity Tips from Food Historian, Ken AlbalaConsider these writing productivity tips from food historian Ken Albala, author or editor of...April 16, 2018

Ruminating on Capitalism and the SensesThe Capitalism and the Senses workshop considered how the market has historically manipulated sight,...June 30, 2017

Reflecting on #OXYFOOD17, a Dream Food Studies Conference#OXYFOOD17 was a truly great food studies conference full of groundbreaking scholarship, fellowship, and...June 22, 2017

Sports, Gender & Society…and Food?Addressing sport, identities, health, media, access, and justice, this conference provided good thinking for...April 8, 2017

Addressing Labor Across the Food System at the Just Food? ForumThis event delivered a complex, layered, and expansive view of the challenges facing workers...April 4, 2017

Food Writing

Beyond Local: Taste the Spirit of Montana at Lilac in Billings

by Emily Contois

Montana is called “the last best place,” a long-cherished refrain that applies now more than ever to its increasingly innovative restaurants. Here, beneath an expansive blue sky, diners can taste not just Montana ingredients, but the spirit of the state itself. Expressed through food, the Montana identity values the land and landscape, direct communication and unpretentiousness, affordability and responsibility, and an ironclad sense of...

April 14, 2016
Comments 0
Featured-3

Book Reviews

August 16, 2018

Q&A with Adrienne Rose Bitar on Diet & the Disease of Civilization

I chatted with fellow dieting scholar Adrienne Rose Bitar on her new book: Diet and the Disease of Civilization....

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
March 21, 2018

Canned Food History with Anna Zeide + Some Oklahoma Thoughts

The stories behind how Anna Zeide and I first met + how fate has brought me to Oklahoma ......

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
March 7, 2018

Garrett Broad Q&A on More Than Just Food: Food Justice & Community ...

Garrett Broad set out to critically examine how food justice functions, its limitations and contradictions, and how it could...

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
December 5, 2017

Q&A with Janis Thiessen, Snacks: A Canadian Food History

Combining food and labor history, Janis Thiessen tells the stories of independent Canadian producers of chips, chocolate, and candy....

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
September 12, 2017

Author Q&A with Andrew Ruis, Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat: The Origins of...

Medical historian Andrew Ruis shares from his new book on the local origins of school lunch in the U.S....

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
August 18, 2017

Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution

S. Margot Finn's new book asserts that today's foodie mania is the result of class anxiety, not culinary enlightenment...

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
May 16, 2017

Mouthfeel: How Texture Makes Taste

Whether crispy, creamy, or juicy, texture makes taste. Changing a food’s texture can also remake its taste—to eaters’ detriment or advantage. These gastro-scientific...

by Emily Contois
Comments 2
November 28, 2016

Food Studies at Brown Welcomes John Lang to Speak on Genetically Modified Food

John Lang will present a Food Studies at Brown lecture on Friday, December 2 from his recently published book,...

by Emily Contois
August 22, 2016

10 Points to Highlight in “Taste as Experience” by Nicola Perullo

How do we experience taste when we eat a Michelin-starred dinner, an all-star diner breakfast, or a can of...

by Emily Contois
Comments 0
April 22, 2014

Celebrating Earth Day with Andrew Ross’ Parable of a Sustainable Phoenix

This year’s Earth Day theme is green cities, a topic that could not relate more directly to today’s post...

by Emily Contois
Comments 2
February 15, 2014

Hippo: It’s What’s For Dinner

While the global food news often tells of meat shortages in China and India, as middle class demand for...

by Emily Contois
Comments 8
December 13, 2013

Review: ‘Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies’ Astutely Addresses Structural ...

Seth Holmes reveals through poignant thick description the life experiences, structural inputs, and health outcomes of Triqui migrant farmworkers.

by Emily Contois
Comments 3

Twitter

My Tweets

Food Studies Resources

resource

What Is Food Studies?

In my editor's note in the fifth issue of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies I considered how to define food studies, particularly during our current political climate.

March 2, 2017
Comments 0
Academia, resource

Publishing in Food Studies Journals: An Index

Food studies is an ever-expanding field with an increasing number of discipline specific and related peer-reviewed journals. As you seek out the right “home” for your food studies scholarship, consider this list...

June 14, 2016
Comments 20
Academia, resource

How to Write a Statement of Purpose

When I applied to PhD programs, I didn’t really find the advice I was seeking for how to write a statement of purpose, so I wrote this post in the...

October 1, 2013
Comment 1
Academia, resource

4 Steps to Find the Right PhD Program for You, Food Studies or Otherwise

So, you’ve decided to pursue a PhD. You’ve heard the advice, “If there’s anything else you want to do, seriously, do that instead” and pondered it thoroughly. You’ve searched...

September 16, 2013
Comments 6
Academia, resource

Graduate Food Studies Programs: A List

I began keeping this list of graduate food studies program after a fascinating roundtable discussion titled, “Masters Programs in Food Studies, Food Systems, and Food Policy,” at the 2013...

June 24, 2013
Comments 9

About

I'm Emily Contois, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa. Click through this site to learn more about my work.

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