What do the fashionable food hot spots of Cape Town, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv have in common? Despite local differences, consumers around the world are drawn to a similar atmosphere: rough wooden tables in postindustrial interiors lit by Edison bulbs. There, they enjoy single-origin coffee, kombucha, and artisanal bread.
This is ‘Global Brooklyn,’ a new transnational; style for urban consumption. It may look shabby and improvised but it is all carefully designed. It may romance the analog, but is made to be Instagrammed. It often references the New York borough, but is shaped by many networked locations where consumers participate in the global circulation of styles, flavors, practices, and values.
Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities, edited by Fabio Parasecoli (New York University) and Mateusz Halawa (Polish Academy of Sciences) follows this phenomenon around the world. The essays in the book explore the global mobility of aesthetic, ethical, and entrepreneurial projects in fourteen different locations. Attentive to local contexts, struggles, and identities, the book explores everyday practices on the ground. Identifying new connections among eating, drinking, design, and communication, the books contributes to a better understanding of the current transformations of food cultures.
In this virtual conversation with MOFAD, Fabio Parasecoli and contributors, Mireya Loza and Bryan Moe, will discuss how and why the phenomenon emerged and became a global trend, why it is often identified with Brooklyn even though its origins are more complicated than that, and how the new style of restaurants and cafés got entangled with shifts in consumers preferences, hipsters culture, and gentrification.
Tickets include the option to purchase Global Brooklyn *shipped to your door by Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City. *US only
MIREYA LOZA
Mireya Loza is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Georgetown University. She earned a doctorate in American Studies and an M.A. in Public Humanities at Brown University. Her areas of research include Latinx History, Labor History and Food Studies. Her book, Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual and Political Freedom (UNC Press), examines America’s largest guest worker program. Her first book won the 2017 Theodore Saloutos Book Prize awarded by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and the Smithsonian Secretary’s Research Prize. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian’s Latino Center. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgetown, she taught in the Department of Food Studies at New York University and was a curator at the National Museum of American History.
BRYAN MOE
Bryan W. Moe is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Biola University located in Southern California. His research is focused on the intersection of rhetoric, social movements, and food. He earned his Ph.D in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University, M.A. from California State University and B.A. from University of Hawaii in Communication Studies. Recent publications include chapters in and Handbook for Food and Popular Culture (2018) and Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities (2021).
FABIO PARASECOLI
Fabio Parasecoli is a professor of Food Studies at New York University, Steinhardt. His research explores the intersections between food and cultural politics, particularly in media and design. He studied East Asian cultures and political science in Rome, Naples and Beijing, and earned his doctorate in Agricultural Sciences at Hohenheim University, Germany. After covering Middle and Far Eastern political issues, he wrote for many years as the U.S. correspondent for Gambero Rosso, Italy's authoritative food and wine magazine. Recent books include Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy (2014, translated into Italian in 2015, into Korean in 2018, and into Chinese in 2021), Feasting Our Eyes: Food, Film, and Cultural Citizenship in the US (2016, co-authored with Laura Lindenfeld), Knowing Where It Comes From: Labeling Traditional Foods to Compete in a Global Market (2017), Food (2019), and Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities (2021, coedited with Mateusz Halawa).
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.