University of Southern Mississippi

Faculty Member, History

Arts & Letters

About

I study the history of class, culture, consumption, and cuisine from the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century.  My book, Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in May 2011.  It was named a finalist for the Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize and the IACP Book Award for Culinary History and is the 2012 James Beard Award winner for a book of reference or scholarship.  In “Turning the Tables,” I argue that changes in restaurant culture at the turn of the century—battles over French-language menus, scientific eating, cosmopolitan cuisine—demonstrate the growing influence of urban middle-class consumers.

My next major project examines children and dining in both public and private.  I have also done work on Chinese cuisine in the United States, nineteenth-century perceptions of cooking in New Orleans, “virtual restaurants” in the 1950s, and historical ideas about taste.

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