“More Than Recipes: Enriching a Campus Common Read with Historical Cookbooks” by Kristen J. Nyitray and Christine Fena describes how they leveraged Stony Brook University’s One Book, One Community initiative to share historical cookbooks from the Special Collections and University Archives. The reading initiative’s selection, Charles Yu’s fictional
Interior Chinatown, references Chinese food stereotypes as a setting for a larger story about the lives and experiences of those struggling to be seen in American society. In a virtual event for students and the public, Fena and Nyitray expanded on the conversation with a presentation and activity using five books in the Jacqueline M. Newman Chinese Cookbook Collection, which offers a unique record of the Chinese diaspora that has carried its rich cuisine around the world. This is Case 23 in the
Teaching with Primary Sources Case Studies series, an open access series addressing the implementation of the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy and sponsored by SAA's Reference, Access, and Outreach Section.
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