School of Social and Political Science

Description

Abstract:

Depictions of Appalachian food culture and practices often romanticize people in the region as good, simple, and, often, white. These stereotypes are harmful to the actual people they are meant to describe as well as to those they exclude. In Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia’s Search for Resilience, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre tell a more complicated story. The authors embark on a cultural tour through food and drinking establishments to investigate regional resilience in and through the plurality of traditions and communities that form the foodways of Southern Appalachia. In this seminar, Dr Stokes takes listeners on a journey through Southern Appalachia, focusing on parts of the region most connected to her research, exploring the complex messages food communicates about the region. She will also reflect on her time as a visiting scholar at the UoE Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.

Bio:

Dr Ashli Stokes is the Interim Chair of the Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Department and Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A 20-21 Fulbright Scholar, her research about communicating identity in the Southern food movement has been described as “a call to action.” She recently published Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia's Search for Resilience, as well as City Places, Country Spaces: Rhetorical Explorations of the Urban/Rural Divide (Peter Lang), and Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South with Wendy Atkins-Sayre. Her research exploring intersections between identity, activism, and regions has been featured in leading academic outlets such as the Southern Communication Journal, Public Relations Inquiry, Journal of Public Interest Communications, and Journal of Public Relations Research and includes five books, while she also contributes to local and national media, such as the Smithsonian/Zocalo Public Square, Academic Minute, and NPR. Recipient of the National Communication Association Public Relations Division PRIDE Award for public relations pedagogy and the Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award from the Southern States Communication Association, Stokes has also received external funding from the North Carolina Humanities Council, National Humanities Center, and other agencies to support her research. Stokes teaches courses on Southern foodways, rhetoric, and public advocacy.