Cooking for the family, as an extension of household management, has traditionally been seen as "women's work," especially in the days before women entered the workforce. But which women were doing the cooking then, and who's doing it now? What does "women's work" in the home look like in 2019, and how has it evolved (or not evolved) as the roles and expectations of women outside of the home continue to change?
For her new book Women on Food, prolific food writer Charlotte Druckman surveyed more than 100 esteemed food journalists, chefs, critics, and thinkers including Bee Wilson, Nigella Lawson, Dr. Jessica Harris, Alison Roman, Emily Gould, and Samin Nosrat, among others, to listen to a diverse range of female voices in the food industry today.
In a panel discussion at the Museum of Food & Drink, Charlotte along with panelists Emily Gould, Therese Nelson, Prajna Desai and Ruth Schwartz Cowan, will speak on the evolution of "women's work," specifically as it relates to cooking, referencing essays and themes in Charlotte's book and the panelists' expert knowledge and experience.
A reception featuring beverages from Brooklyn Brewery and cheeses from Foster Sundry will follow along with a book signing of Women on Food.
CHARLOTTE DRUCKMAN
Druckman is a journalist, food writer, and creator of Food52’s Tournament of Cookbooks (aka the Piglet). She is the author of Women on Food; Stir, Sizzle, Bake; and Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen and coauthor of Anita Lo’s Cooking Without Borders. She resides in New York City.
RUTH COWAN
Ruth Schwartz Cowan is the Janice and Julian Bers Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (1983) as well as five other books and many articles. She has been a home cook for more than 50 years and has, in her own estimation at least, become fairly expert at it.
PRAJNA DESAI
Prajna Desai is an art historian and writer of fiction. Her scholarship addresses visual politics, print culture, and built form at the intersection of histories of inequality and narratives of science. Prajna holds a Masters from the University of Mumbai and a PhD from Yale University. She currently guest lectures on post-1945 transnational art histories at the School of Visual Arts (New York). In addition to her book, The Indecisive Chicken: Stories and recipes from eight Dharavi cooks (2015), which considers micro-histories of gender, labor, and food pathways, her publications have appeared widely in academic but also in real-time print outlets such as Artforum, Art in America, Aperture, and Caravan. Her first book of poetry, why not again a love story, was published by Planta Baja Press in October 2019.
EMILY GOULD
Emily is the author of And The Heart Says Whatever, Friendship, and the forthcoming Perfect Tunes (April 2020). With Ruth Curry, she runs Emily Books, which sells and publishes books by women as an imprint of Coffee House Press. She is a contributor to Bookforum and The Cut. She teaches writing in New York City, where she lives with her family.
THERESE NELSON
Therese Nelson is a chef, writer, and founder of Black Culinary History.com, a social network and digital archive she started in 2008 as a way to preserve black heritage throughout the African culinary diaspora, to celebrate and network black chefs globally, and to steward modern black foodways into this next generation.