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Ingredients for Revolution: A History of Feminist Restaurants and Queer Spaces

  • 7-8pm ET online zoom link will be emailed with order confirmation (map)

ONLINE EVENT

Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the trailblazing restaurant Mother Courage of New York City, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. As key sites of cultural and political significance, this volume shows the essential role these institutions served for multiple social justice movements including women’s liberation, LGBTQ equality, and food justice, as well as for training women workers and entrepreneurs. 

Join author Alex D. Ketchum in conversation with scholar Dr. KC Hysmith as she tells the story of primarily lesbian, queer women, and folks who started these spaces and discusses how these organizations reconciled feminist beliefs with capitalism and how they strove for more equitable and sustainable business practices. 

Ingredients for Revolution is a fundamental work of women’s history, food history, and cultural history.  

Tickets include the option to purchase a copy of Ingredients for Revolution by Alexandra Ketchum *shipped to your door by Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City. *US residents only

ALEXANDRA KETCHUM

Since 2018, Dr. Alex Ketchum has been the Faculty Lecturer of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies of McGill University. She is the Director of the Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab and the organizer of Disrupting Disruptions: The Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Tech Speaker and Workshop Series. Her work integrates food, environmental, technological, and gender history. Ketchum's first peer-reviewed book, Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press, 2022), examines the power dynamics that impact who gets to create certain kinds of academic work and for whom these outputs are accessible.

Ketchum's second book Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses (2022), is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. Ketchum's interest in past imaginings of utopia through business creation and the implementation of communications technologies has guided her new research and third book project on historically contextualizing the relationship between feminist ethics and AI. 

You can find out more about her other writings, podcasts, zines, exhibitions, and more at https://www.alexketchum.ca

KC HYSMITH

KC Hysmith is a Texas-bred, North Carolina-based writer, food historian, recipe developer, and photographer. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation "#FOODHERSTORY: Food and American Women's Political Resistance from Suffrage to the Digital Age" brings together her research interests of food, gender, and the digital landscape. She also holds an MLA in Gastronomy from Boston University. She is the co-author of Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook with James Beard Award Winning chef Ricky Moore and the associate editor of Edible North Carolina: A Journey Across a State of Flavor. Her writing and work have appeared in Gastronomica, The Boston Globe, Sift, Culture Magazine, Cake Zine, Food52, Spruce Eats, The Local Palate, and more. She is also the social media manager for MOFAD!

KITCHEN ARTS & LETTERS

Kitchen Arts & Letters is a bookstore devoted to food and drink, with titles imported from around the world. They emphasize works on food culture and innovation.

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