Feeding Change: Revisiting Intersections of Food, Health, Labor, and Education in 20th-Century America

This panel explores the intersections of gender, labor, and food as sites of historical change and activism in 20th-century America. We offer arguments that challenge commonly held tropes and ideas of food education, culinary labor, and health ideologies in the past, centralizing previously marginalized workers and consumers. Drawing from diverse settings—school cafeterias, cooking schools, home kitchens, and automated dining spaces—the papers illuminate how women and marginalized communities used culinary labor to navigate, challenge, and reshape societal norms. As food studies scholars and historians, we are bringing both sustenance and indigestion- vis a vis disruptions to placid perceptions of the historical narrative - to this kitchen table discussion.