Speaker: Christopher Beckman Sausalito, California SPEAKER BIO Christopher Beckman was born in San Francisco and holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Archaeology, with a research focus on the intersection of material culture and subsistence patterns – how the small, often overlooked details (like the humble anchovy) have shaped civilizations more than we realize. His fieldwork… Read More »Twist of the Tail: How the Humble Anchovy Flavored Western Cuisine

The Authors   Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald are co-authors of three books on New England and American food history—America's Founding Food (University of North Carolina Press, 2004; pbk. 2015), Northern Hospitality (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), and United Tastes (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). Their collaboration, which also includes scholarly articles, extensive public speaking, and… Read More »The Lives and Cookbooks of Three Nineteenth-Century Women

SPEAKER BIO: KC Hysmith, PhD, is a Texas-born, North Carolina-based writer, food scholar, and recipe developer whose work focuses on the intersection of gender, food, and technologies. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of North Carolina and a Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy from Boston University. Her work has appeared… Read More »Protest Baking: The Role of Cakes, Pies, and Other Baked Goods in American Political History

SPEAKER: Nicola Twilley SPEAKER BIO Nicola Twilley is author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, winner of the 2025 James Beard Award for Literary Writing, the 2025 California Book Awards Nonfiction Gold Medal, the 2025 Nach Waxman Prize, and the 2025 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Medal for Journalism and Investigative… Read More »Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves

Speaker: Susan Benjamin Harpers Ferry, West Virgnia (Members will receive a link and passcode.) SPEAKER BIO Susan Benjamin, a former academic, researches the cultural history of sugars, sweets, and other fun foods from pre-history to the late 20th century.  She is owner of True Treats, recognized as one of the world’s only research-based historic candy… Read More »Fun Foods: The Unknown, Unexpected, and Long Forgotten

Speaker: Rick Rodgers West Orange, New Jersey RICK RODGERS BIOGRAPHY For over three decades, Rick Rodgers has been one of the most versatile names in the food business. Through his work as a teacher, food writer, cookbook author and editor, and media guest chef, his infectious love of good food reaches countless cooks every day.… Read More »Kaffeehaus: How Vienna Changed Global Baking

Speaker: Victoria Johnson New York Via Zoom (Members will receive a link and passcode.) Speaker Bio Victoria Johnson is Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale in 1991 and her Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia in 2002.… Read More »American Eden: David Hosack, Botany and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

Speaker: Darra Goldstein Williamstown, Massachusetts SPEAKER BIO Darra Goldstein, the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita, at Williams College, is the founding editor of Gastronomica and editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. She also serves as series editor of California Studies in Food and Culture from… Read More »The Kingdom of Rye: Russian Food and National Identity

Speaker: Nevin Martell Silver Spring, Maryland Via Zoom (Members will receive a link and passcode.) BIO Nevin Martell is a D.C.-area based independent writer-photographer focusing on food, foraging, and travel, whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, National Geographic, The Boston Globe, USA Today, Bloomberg, BBC, The Daily Beast, AARP, Men’s Journal, Fortune, Travel +… Read More »My Culinary Writing Career

Speaker: Camper English San Francisco, California SPEAKER BIO Camper English is the author of Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits and Cocktails (Penguin, 2022), which Scientific American described as “every bit as entertaining as it is educational,” and The New York Times praised as “a tirelessly researched book on the… Read More »Corpse Reviver! The History of Cocktails and Medicine

Speaker: Roger Sherman, New York City TALK DESCRIPTION During this interactive presentation Roger will show more than a dozen scenes that were not included in his acclaimed documentary, In Search of Israeli Cuisine, a portrait of the Israeli people told through food, conflict, and all. Scenes will illustrate how Israel went from being one of… Read More »The New Face of Israeli Cuisine