Kera Lovell, Ph.D.

Research Findings and Fellowships

For the most up-to-date list of grants and fellowships I have been awarded, see my list of Scholarships, Fellowships, and Awards. Additionally, you can read Press on these awards as well as how my work has reached broader academic and public audiences.

Most recently I was awarded a research fellowship by the Graham Foundation for my book project on the People’s Park movement. I have earned several other research awards and fellowships, including the University of Illinois, Chicago’s Richard Daley Library a Short-Term Travel Fellowship – offering funding to spend a monthin the archives. Read my brief mid-month research report and see photographs of my findings here.

Thanks to the Hoover Institution, the University of Illinois, Chicago, Michigan Tech University, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and Purdue University for awarding me with archival research grants.

Inspiration: Mapping Chicago from Below

The history of cartography is often remembered as a legacy of white men. With “imperial eyes” (Pratt, 1992), cartographers granted power to largely northern white nation-states through borders and names with the stroke of a pen. From the age of exploration to mid-twentieth century redlining, maps have shaped people, places, histories, and our identities. Ultimately, maps visualize a particular subset of information at a particular moment in time. When analyzed within their particular historical context through a critical lens of power structures, they collectively illuminate a quilt of information about the relationship between people and power.

CityLab’s (@citylab) recent post on “How Women Mapped the Upheaval of 19th Century America” offers a new perspective by evidencing how women engaged in map-making techniques that have been overshadowed. This article is part of a series by Laura Bliss (@mslaurabliss) who interviewed New York Public Library map historian Alice Hudson who had names of more than a thousand women who had drawn, published, printed, engraved, sold, or traded maps prior to 1900 alone. Bliss has also paired images with contextual information from Will C. van den Hoonardd’s book Map Worlds: A History of Women in Cartography. [See this really cool image of maps drawn by Shanawdithit of the Newfoundland Beothuk tribe c. 1829. who plotted memories of her tribe’s movements and collisions with settlers nearly two decades prior.]

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This map by Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, “Nationalities Map No. 1,” from Hull-House Maps and Papers, 1895, (Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library), visualizes demographics of nationalities in the Near West Side of Chicago as part of Holbrook’s work with Jane Addams’s Hull House settlement house that served these populations. From this image we can see patterns of immigrant aggregations in the neighborhood along with segregation. We can see how immigrants are being categorized – along lines of nationality like German and Swiss and language, rather than along lines of skin color [which evidences historian David Roediger’s argument in his book Working Toward Whiteness that reveals processes of labor organizing and real estate policy that transformed Northern European new immigrants into “white ethnics.”]

If you zoomed out, you could see how close rail lines and the waterways were to the East. As shown in this stylistically identical map by Samuel Greeley, families in this neighborhood earned an average of $7.50 per week working in nearby factories.

Do you know what a map of this area looks like today?

map near west side chicago

It’s a tollway. In the mid-twentieth century, politicians embarked on a massive urban renewal campaign to displace historic immigrant neighborhoods and communities of working-class people of color out of the city. This demolition would make way for a new highway enabling middle-class whites to travel from the suburbs to the inner-city for work. Additionally, huge portions of the neighborhood were demolished as part of UIC’s expansion campaign. For more on this read Amanda Seligman’s book Block by Block.

Although Holbrook’s work is significant (as well as fun and celebratory in light of Women’s History Month), focused narratives heralding the contributions of select middle-class women often read as more additive than revolutionary – at times reinforcing a liberal feminist discourse of “look, women were there” rather than re-examining how power structures have shaped the histories we hide, exalt, and define as part of our identities.

Ultimately, how can we excavate histories of mapping “from below”? What can we learn from revealing map-making techniques of migrant farm workers, the enslaved, prostitutes, meth addicts, or Civil Rights Movement activists? What would current folk cartography reveal about urban power relations today?

Syllabus – Food Histories

Trying to finish a syllabus is nearly impossible. To put the pen down means to admit that your course can never be comprehensive – never conclusive. And when it comes to teaching the history of food (even in the U.S.), it feels impossible to press print. But here’s to beginning complex discussions about food somewhere!

Here is a syllabus for an undergraduate American Studies course exploring transnational American food studies I designed to teach as a distance learning option at Purdue University in the spring of 2017. Having taught a distance learning course and wrestled with how to make meaningful connections with students via the Internet, I’ve tried to use technology and interactive exercises to still make food a medium for engaging with American history and culture critically.

While the course is organized around weekly readings regarding 11 key ingredients, I’ve incorporated assignments that will enable students to complete independent projects using both digital technology and oral history tools. One additional extra credit option allows students to “choose their own adventure” by documenting and analyzing an independent field trip to a site of food production and consumption wherever they are located.

Weeks have been organized around 11 key ingredients, with the ultimate goal of showing how there is no one American diet. Food ingredients have been arranged in a way to capture key national discussions chronologically, from rice and sugar in connection with colonialism and enslavement to coffee and wheat in regards to modern processes of fast food production and globalization.

See the reading and assignments schedule here at my Academia.edu page, where you can find the complete PDF version of the syllabus.

It was a painstakingly difficult process to narrow this course to 11 ingredients. What ingredients would you include in your course on American food histories? Any must-have readings on food history that I should include for my next course? Share them with me!

Rosa Parks’s Pancakes & Amelia Earhart’s Waffles

Happy Women’s History Month! Today we’re hitting the archives. Imagine a tip jar: Amelia Earhart’s Sour Cream Waffles versus Rosa Parks’s Peanut Butter Pancakes. Who’s the winner!? I feel a taste-test coming.

Rosa Parks’s Peanut Butter Pancakes

Rosa Parks Pancakes — Click the image to see a larger version of this recipe at the Library of Congress.

Amelia Earhart’s Sour Cream Waffles

Amelisa Earhart Waffles — Click the image to see a larger version of this recipe at the Purdue University Archives.

Boiled Peanuts 4 Ways

Today I decided to finally (after about 7 months of waiting) boil a bag of raw peanuts I bought while visiting family in Southern Georgia last summer. I currently live in Muncie, Indiana and nothing really comes close to quenching my thirst for these little tasty morsels. These ever so slightly salty hot pockets, when popped with your thumbs and forefingers at the seam, reveal two or three (four if you’re lucky) perfectly aligned and tightly nestled burgundy beans. Non-Southerners halt! You do not dive in to pluck them with your fingers from their soggy shells. Rather, lift up the bean-filled half-shell to your mouth and bite them out. If you have a straggler, use your empty shell half to scoop it out into your mouth. Most often you’ll find these on the side of the road or at a baseball game, so toss your empty shells into the gaps of the metal bleachers below or out your window. My tactic is to toss my empty shells back into the group so that finding an uneaten one increasingly becomes more like a scavenger hunt. Lick your fingers and reach back again into the warm damp brown bag for another.

Midwesterners and New Englanders who currently surround me do not know what they are missing. I once found these on a menu at a hipster pizza joint in Louisville and ordered for the table – me, a Cape Codder, and two Californians.

“What does it taste like?”

Me: “A boiled peanut. Kind of like Southern edamame.”

“Ah, I love edamame.”

They all tried them and politely never finished excavating their sample, forcing me to intake about 100 salty peanuts by myself. I mean, when it comes to boiled peanuts, there is a “me” in team. I actually think that boiled peanuts are even tastier (and way unhealthier) than edamame. They’re the Pringles of earthen snacks.

roadside-stand — Looking for a place to buy boiled peanuts while in the South? This photo from the AdventuresseTravels Blog about sums it up (short of heading to the snack stand at your local Little League baseball game).

And, since it’s Black History Month, boiled peanuts are a way to learn more about the transnational backstories of America’s food culture. As summed up here at the National Peanut Board, boiled peanuts first came to America via enslaved Africans who also brought the practice to South America and the Caribbean. Wikipedia offers some quick insight into their continued popularity throughout Asia – especially Taiwan – as street snacks.

So last night I finally decided to boil up a batch of peanuts. Having never done this myself, I consulted Alton Brown’s recipe. About an hour and a half into their 4-hour boil, I smelled home: It was the scent of convincing my parents to give me $4 so I could pass the time while watching my sister strike out the batters in another slow-pitch softball game. Delish.

Boiled Peanuts 2 — How should a boiled peanut look? Like this fantastic photo by Katie Taylor at Blogher. Whole boiled peanuts on the left, separated peanut pockets showing their wine/burgundy color on the right. Check out her recipe (and walk down Southern Georgia memory lane) here.

Alton Brown’s recipe is really easy and adaptable:

Rinse and soak the peanut shells in water for 30 minutes (they float so try and weigh them down so you can get the most amount of dirt off them)
Rinse again after soaking and toss into a pot
Generously cover with water (think 1 part peanuts, 1.5 parts water? Or enough water that you’ll be able to boil them for 4 hours and they won’t burn to the bottom)
Add salt (I’d begin with at least 1/3 cup of salt and about 2-3 hours in, pop one open and taste to see if you need more salt. Feel free to keep tasting every 45 minutes to determine your preferred texture.)
Boil for 1-5 hours depending on their freshness. Don’t run out of water and burn your nuts.

This food is very forgiving. I can’t honestly recall having had peanuts boiled too long, or peanuts that were too salty. [The worst boiled peanuts I can recall tasted as if they had been cooked the day prior and reboiled. And I probably still ate those. I wouldn’t suggest buying them at the store in cans or from the frozen aisle.]

You can add other flavors to the pot too, like bouillon, Worcestershire sauce, crab boil seasoning, Maggie’s, spice it up Sichuan style, or keep it simple with sea salt. On a low-salt diet? Try it without – the salt doesn’t impact the texture.

IMG_2104-1024x683 — In the words of one 90’s hit band, spice up your life – and your boiled peanuts. Try this blend of Chinese-Style boiled peanuts at the Umami Holiday blog (their photo).

Three cultural fusion boiled peanut recipes I’m looking forward to trying are Boiled Peanut Hummus by Slim Pickin’s Kitchen, Chinese-Style Boiled Peanuts by Umami Holiday, or Pat’s Spicy Garlic Hawaiian Boiled Peanuts. Share your boiled peanut memories and recipes with me!

Teaching: Mind Mapping American Bodies

: A student in my course “American Bodies” thinks back critically on the class, arguing that American citizens are defined by group-specific stereotypes that create different experiences and further reinforce misconceptions:; “We discussed many different forms of bodies that have all had distinct social associations connected to them. For the most part, white men have dominated society, always being in power and having authority over others. Those with negative social associations have always been at a disadvantage and often have been restricted, whether that be socially or under very specific laws created by those in power. We discussed how people in power have tried to regulate and restrict those below them often for nothing more than their skin color….”

In my American Studies courses I ask students to construct a mind map with an accompanying essay reflecting back on the course. The assignment aims to secretly get students to think about a structural analysis of power.

For this assignment, students were asked to reimagine the course structure by choosing a few of the course readings, films, lectures, etc. and lumping them into new categories and linking these categories and topics. It might sound a bit confusing, abstract, or a little hippie granola for you, but when executed correctly produces beautiful, thought-provoking images that evidence students reflecting critically on the course material.

First I’m going to give you the assignment basics and then I’ll share some of the best mind maps and their essays from my Spring 2015 course I designed, “Blood, Bones, and Brains: 20th Century History of American Bodies.” (You can see the syllabus for that course on my Academia.edu page.)

Assignment Basics

I show them this mind map as an example and tell them that the center of the mind map should be their overarching argument — each branch shooting out from the center should be a main theme, and then the smaller lines attached to those main theme branches should be their evidence to prove their argument. I use that mind map example because many others that you can find through Google are not intending to evidence an argument and, therefore, tend to be more descriptive brainstorming maps than a tool for visualizing a thesis.

However, unlike that mind map example linked above, students are asked to build off the main theme branches with evidence from the course. These offshoots from the main themes can be organized in whatever fashion they want. Sometimes you’ll find clear linkages and in other cases huge messy clouds of connections. A brief 1-page explanatory essay accompanies the image in order to articulate the student’s argument and evidence why those themes, offshoots, and connections/linkages were selected. Students can create these mind maps whatever way they’d like — via 3D model, video, Powerpoint, drawn by hand, or using some of these programs.

Results

Student 1:

“My mind map is divided into the three units (Turn of the Century, World War Era, and Postwar) that made up our semester. Each unit is then divided into the topics of each class. Lastly, I added the distinct topics and concepts that we learned in class and discovered in the readings. In the middle of my mind map I drew a person to represent the common theme of our class, American bodies. I made him look kind of like a super hero because I feel like everything we learned throughout the semester makes the American body; no matter skin color, shape, class, race, a superhero….”

Student 2:

“It is not everyday when you think about people and their mindsets/values as “bodies”. When we start to think of bodies and how they are shaped and characterized by society, I realized how we start to perceive them. Bodies such as women, people of color, or those who are poor are seen as “weak”, “disabled”, and even not worth “saving”. These perceptions lead to the image they have on society. They are viewed as these things with the help of racism and sexism. Are these bodies really “free” in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave if they cannot even be seen as equal?

It was interesting to see that the typical “white, middle class male” wasn’t even deemed glorious if they were not muscular and well behaved gentleman of society. The actions that were/are taken on these people include laws, internalized/externalized judgments, and discrimination. Society chose to oppress those who weren’t fit for society. Women, people of color, and even “weak” men were oppressed without question and still are today. The progression of these topics led to dire consequences for society. Society was divided and there was a lack of trust for other groups and the government as a whole. This begs the question: “why?”. Why did we oppress and continue to oppress different groups of bodies?”

Student 3:

“The concept of the ideal body came from the readings: Modified Bodies, Bodies on Display, Regulating Bodies, and Bodies in Crisis. Each of these readings spoke about wanting to achieve the perfect or ideal body or of not having that ideal body (Regulating Bodies). Another strong theme was race. The race factor was in almost every one of our readings. It was what I would almost venture to say the main theme was of our class. It was everywhere which is appropriate since it is everywhere in everyday life….”

Student 4:

“Something that I came to understand is that the theme of Bodies on Display is perpetual, for ‘the gaze’ as you called it, is and will always be present. In this course, I was able to look at bodies from a new perspective. With my mind map I aimed to visualize essentially, how the themes we covered are interconnected. For example, a modified body is equally a body in pain and a body in conflict. Women who would change their images whether through make up, breast implants, or vaginal reconstruction (a topic covered in another class), would initially be bodies in a state of conflict, torn between what they believed to be true beauty and ugliness. Simultaneous they would be a body in pain, for just about all the modification process that we talked about came at some cost or risk….”

Student 5:

This student divided their mind map into quadrants: “When I went to first create my mind map, I knew I definitely wanted there to be certain divisions of demographics and then I wanted to place the readings, that related to that aspect of the body, into that category. I chose to divide the course into four different categories: race, class, gender, and able-bodies. Although these are just a few of many demographics, I feel like the readings fit nicely and evenly into those categories. While I have placed all of these readings into specific categories, they definitely, without question, overlap with one another in more ways than one. After dividing the readings into their corresponding areas of concentration, I then wrote a phrase arrowed off of the reading that explained one prominent aspect of the reading….”

Reflections

Ultimately, the assignment worked pretty well in getting students to explore the relationship between group identities and intersectionality. Having recently spoken with Julian Chambliss about his use of infographics in the classroom almost as research reports, I’m determined to find new ways of incorporating visual and experiential modes of communication and critical thinking into courses that moves beyond strictly reading and writing. Have other ideas? Share them with me!

Coffee is simple

I love coffee. I drink it everyday – all day. I like to dip my doughnuts in it. I like to sip it in small glasses from hipster coffee shops. I like it from Italian highway rest areas. I like coffee.

It is sometimes difficult to communicate to other people what type of coffee you would like. For example, I like to order a doppio with a splash of hot milk. This is not a latte. This is not a macchiato (in America). This is a cortado in a to-go cup. But if espresso isn’t an option, how much milk do I ask for? Well how strong is your coffee?

Wired has suggested that I “taste coffee like a pro” by using this detailed flavor wheel produced by Specialty Coffee Association of America.

However, I can honestly say I’ve never tasted the sour tobacco cereal undertones of my morning cup of joe. I’m not sure if my taste buds are ready for that jump.

While I’ll definitely look to the flavor wheel when deciding my dinner options, my idea of a good cup of coffee is much simpler and almost never strays from country to country. My perfect cup is Muhammad Ali holding a mug of hot lava. It is the perfect complement to a doughnut, jammed biscuit, morning writing assignment, or a good book on the front porch. (Clearly my Keurig is dysfunctional.)

Where’s your perfect cup on my “Coffee Simplified” map?

American Cocktail Map

Hannah Gregg at Buzzfeed has created a beautiful map and list of state-themed cocktails for when you’re doing some cross-country driving or listening to the vote count on election night.

Keep in mind, these drinks are not the go-to for locals. For example, no one in Indiana is drinking “The Refined Janet Guthrie (Sweet Tea Vodka, Refined Mixers margarita mix)” which, in honor of the Indy 500, was created to commemorate the first woman that qualified and drove in the race. Get the recipe here. In fact, although the Indy 500 is celebrated as a national holiday along with July 4th, no one here is celebrating the women’s history behind the Indy 500. It would be magical, but it ain’t happen’. Also, that cocktail’s delightful combination of Margarita mix and sweet tea vodka sounds disgusting.

Grub Street also mapped out historic prohibition-era-style cocktails for all 50 states and came up with the “North Shore Flower” for Indiana:

Indiana

North Shore Flower

Tavern on South, Indianapolis

The key here is tracking down the specific gin, which is made in Illinois, about an hour north of Chicago: In a shaker, combine 2 ounces North Shore Gin Number 6, 1 1/4 ounce Chase elderflower liqueur, 3/4 ounce lemon juice, and 1/2 ounce gum syrup (the bar uses Wilks & Wilson). Shake with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The cocktail sounds delicious but the gin is from Illinois. Although Indiana’s northern border does make up the south shore of Lake Michigan, this geography does not represent the whole state. And, let’s be honest, I live in Indiana and it is like pulling teeth to find a good cocktail outside of Indianapolis. The poison of choice? Beer. More specifically, $3 pitchers of PBR or a proper Indiana-made beer.

Inspired by Bon Appetit’s recent Donald Trump-looking drink – The Combover – I tasked myself with creating an Indiana micro-cultural cocktail that would try to best represent the Muncie, Indiana quilt: histories of Native American land dispossession and white cultural appropriation of Indian heritage, rampant post-industrialism in the Rust Belt, corn and big ag, churches, gun culture and hunting, racism and the KKK, the nation’s hometown of meth production, Middletown and Muncie’s history as the typical American suburban city, and white people with largely German ethnic roots. What a fun challenge.

30316d830e6680c2491d53720138167c — This is actually a photo of a Breaking Bad-themed cocktail, but you get the idea!

I call it, the Funcie Munsee

2 oz of Indiana (corn) Vodka from Heartland Distillers
2 oz of any cheap beer on tap
1 fizzed egg white (delicious and makes your drink white – think of it as a country farm-to-table style additive)
1/2 oz simple syrup (make your own or try one from local Wilks & Wilson)
stir with 1 blue rock candy swizzle stick
drink over ice from a Ball jar (old money from the Ball brothers that started Ball State with money from glass and glass jar manufacturing – jobs are all gone)

I haven’t tried this so if it tastes bad, shoot and chase with more cheap beer.

Stir, sip, and repeat unless it’s on a Sunday and then you should be in church.

Teaching Spotlight: Maps of American Food

I’m in the throes of organizing a course for the American Studies program at Purdue on food studies – a class exploring the connections between food, identity, and place. Today’s visual inspirations are maps I’ve found trying to embed certain recipes within US regions and cities. What could you add to these maps? How would your map of US food culture differ?

For me, these are missing a fundamental food from my youth: pecans. I was raised in Leesburg, Georgia – a city with mostly suburbs that were rapidly created after nearby Albany was integrated to meet the demands of white flight in the 1960s.

My family moved there after our home (and thousands of others) were flooded during Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994, fueling new housing development in the largely rural Leesburg. When we moved to Leesburg, our middle-of-nowhere suburb was surrounded by pecan orchards. Miles and miles of pecan trees about 20 feet tall, in rigidly aligned rows as far as you could see.

But this landscape changed in the 10 years I lived there from about 1995 to 2005. Food culture shifted – nuts became more expensive and too caloric and fatty for mid-1990s diet fads. The price of land spiked – the push for new housing developments made pecan orchards prime candidates for new suburbs.

When I left for college, few pecan farms remained. Identical houses were built equidistant every 3-4 trees. “Who would want to live in such a maniacal grid?” I thought from our largely wooded suburb (woods that would be demolished to build more houses in the coming decades).

Needless to say, I would add pecans and walnuts to Georgia on my map. When I was young, I could find them raw in snack bowls on my grandma’s dinner table, sprinkled atop the sweet potato souffle on Thanksgiving, and forming the crunchy crust of a pecan pie…not to mention, right outside the kitchen window.

140315_EYE_Food maps06.jpg.CROP.original-original

red-white-and-booze-mapping-all-50-states-most-iconic-beer-hooch

Eating America

I’m in the process of creating a syllabus for a 200-level undergraduate course on unpacking the transnational roots of core American food ingredients, and in looking for a good image for the syllabus have discovered a beautiful array of US flags made of food.

Now, for the Fourth of July, I’ve always loved to make a patriotically-themed white sheet cake, taking my precious time to carefully slice the strawberries and arrange them with raspberries and blueberries in different constellations nestled in the homemade whipped cream. I do not own an American flag, nor wear patriotic clothing, nor say the Pledge of Allegiance, yet I revel in consuming an edible American icon one day of the year. And interestingly, I’ve never strayed from this recipe until now, having just found a smorgasbord of different flag-themed foods, from delicious sweets to savory main dishes, all arranged in crimson and ivory stripes. As silly as these images might seem, they scratch at the surface of America’s diverse food culture and plethora of eater identities (the health nut, the fast food junkie, the sweet-tooth, and so on). Yet a trip to the local big-brand grocery store might make you think how few red, white, and blue ingredients you have on your palette. How quick we forget about blanched northern beans, an eggplant’s thin indigo shell, and the glistening skeleton of a buttered lobster that add color to America’s dinner table.

Check out these cool dishes below and suggest any unique variations that your family shares (or other ridiculous ones that you might find!).