Amy Bentley is a professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies in the Steinhardt School at New York University. A historian with interests in the social, historical, and cultural contexts of food, she is the author of the Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health and the Industrialization of the American Diet (University of California Press, 2014), which was nominated for a James Beard Award, and also winner of the ASFS Best Book Award.
Other books include Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning (co-editor) (Springer 2021), Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity (University of Illinois, 1998), A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Era (editor) (Bloomsbury, 2011), as well as articles on such diverse topics as ketchup in Reagan’s America, the politics of southwestern cuisine, and a historiography of food riots. Her current research projects include a history of food in US hospitals, and the meanings and uses of food production in religious communities.
In addition to her work as a food historian, she is involved in a wide range of food-related academic and applied projects, including the Food and COVID-19 NYU digital archive, and as co-founder of the NYU Urban Farm Lab and the Experimental Cuisine Collective (2007-2016). The former Editor-in-Chief of Food, Culture, and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (2013-2019), Bentley is co-editor of the book series Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations (Bloomsbury). She serves as a board member for the Bloomsbury Food Library, the Cornell University HEARTH Collection, and the journals Food and Foodways and Graduate Journal of Food Studies. She is a Faculty Fellow in Residence at Brittany Hall at NYU.
She and Brett Gary, NYU Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, are parents of Joey (26), Annabelle (23) and Ruby (20).
Contact Information:
Amy Bentley
Department of Nutrition and Food Studies
New York University
411 Lafayette Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
Office: 212-998-5580
NYU Faculty Page: please click here
amy.bentley@nyu.edu
Twitter: @ABentleyNYC
