Dr. Jessica B. Harris has been one of the world’s most renowned scholars of the food of the African diaspora since the mid-1980s. Her work has led us to this moment where the language and appetite for deeper, more nuanced exploration of these foodways is finding itself in the halls of culinary schools and universities as a subject of deeper inquiry.
in 2020 she began in earnest a conversation at the CIA that led to the development of a 10-week extension course called The Cuisines of Africa and Its Diaspora in the Americas. The success of the course and the subsequent extension of the course into a full-blown credit-bearing concentration course led the school to use th 2022 Worlds of Flavor conference as a kind of coming out party to introduce the global voices contributing their work to the modern African foodways conversation.
As you can see in the linked program overview, our descriptor for the program was "An exploration of food, culture, and innovation on the African continent and the impacts and flavors of the African Diaspora." I had th honor of curating the conference program as the Chair of a program committee that included Dr. Scott Alves Barton, Michael Elégbèdé, Dr. Jessica B. Harris, JJ Johnson, Kwame Onwuachi, and Dr. Maricel Presilla, Matthew Raiford, Jamila Robinson, and Pierre Thiam.
You can check out images from the event here and you can watch videos of the public general sessions below.