Practicing intersectional food pedagogies in higher education: an autoethnography of two critical food studies professors

Using a collaborative auto-ethnographic approach, this paper draws on our combined experience as critical food studies professors to assess the needs, opportunities, and difficulties of developing an effective, intersectional food pedagogy for undergraduate students at public universities in the United States. We explore the challenges of teaching about racialized, classed, and gendered dynamics in our food systems without contributing to problematic narratives that position those experiencing food insecurity and food injustice as victims or as lacking agency. As an emerging field of study, food studies is well-suited to offer insights related to the historical and structural inequalities of our food systems and raise critical questions regarding what constitutes “good” food practices. However, the discipline also needs to integrate stories of hope and desire of/with BIPOC, elderly, low-income, and other communities and offer tools for how to effect change. Here, we share insights from two strategies for imparting a critical and hopeful food pedagogy: bringing students out of the classroom through community-action research and bringing student selves into the classroom through food storytelling. We thus advance conversations about practicing intersectional food pedagogies within real-life constraints of limited time, budget-cuts, and attacks on critical race studies within the neoliberal American university system.