Amy Bentley is Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. A historian with interests in the social, historical, and cultural contexts of food, she is the author of Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (University of California Press, 2014), (James Beard Award finalist, and ASFS Best Book Award). For more information see inventingbabyfood.com.
Other books include 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), and the co-edited volume with Simona Stano Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning (Springer 2021). Book chapter and journal articles feature such topics as ketchup in Reagan's America, the politics of southwestern cuisine, and a historiography of food riots (see Selected Publications below). Her current research projects include a history of food in US hospitals, and the cultural and historical contexts of meat and dairy substitutes.
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 with Peter Scholliers 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, the book series Food and Society: New Directions (Bristol University Press) and the journals Food and Foodways, Graduate Journal of Food Studies and Gastronomy.
Selected Publications
- Bentley, Amy, Samantha Ruth Brown, Shayne Leslie Figueroa, Salma Serry, and Claudia Saffar (2023). "School Meals in Multicultural/Multireligious Settings." In Fraser-Pearce and Fraser, eds, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Schools and Religion (September).
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Bentley, Amy (2022). "Brother Herman Zaccarelli and the Influence of Vatican II on Catholic Institutional Food Service." Research in Hospitality Management, 12:3, 225-234. DOI: 10.1080/22243534.2023.2202487
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Kelly A. Spring, Scott A. Barton & Amy Bentley (2022). “Online Learning and Community-Engaged Pedagogy During a Global Health Crisis: Teaching Food Studies & COVID-19.” Food, Culture & Society DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2022.2148085
- Bentley, Amy (2022). "Food and Modernity in Post-Vatican II Catholicism: Herman Zaccarelli and the Food Research Center for Catholic Institutions." Dublin Gastronomy Symposium Proceedings, May 31-June 1.
- Bentley, Amy (2021). "Ketchup as a Vegetable: Condiments and the Politics of School Lunch in Reagan's America." Gastronomica 21:1(February): 17-27.
- Simona Stano and Amy Bentley (2021). Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning (Springer).
- Bentley, Amy and Stephanie Borkowsky (2020). "The Food and COVID-19 NYC Archive: Mapping the Pandemic's Effect on Food in Real Time," Gastronomica, 20:4 (December): 8-11.
- Bentley, Amy (2019). "What Should Babies Eat and Whose Business is it? In Matthew Morse Booker and Charles C. Ludington, Eds. Food Fights: How the Past Matters in Contemporary Food Debates (University of North Carolina Press): 189-207.
- Bentley, Amy (2018). Afterward for Food Fights: A Global Perspective. Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 5.
- Bentley, Amy (2018). “How Ketchup Revolutionized How Food is Grown, Processed, and Regulated" June 4. Smithsonian.com.
- Albala, Ken, Warren Belasco, Amy Bentley, Lisa Heldke, and Alex McIntosh (2017). "FCS Editors' Roundtable: Reflections on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Journal." Food, Culture and Society 20:1(March): 1-14.
- Bentley, Amy (2016). "Growing Concerns." The Times Literary Supplement (March 25).
- Amy Bentley (2014), Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (UC Press).
- Amy Bentley and Hi’ilei Hobart (2014). “The Industrialization of Food in Recent United States History.” In Paul Freedman et al, eds. Food in Time and Place: The American Historical Association Companion to Food History (University of California Press): 165-187.
- Amy Bentley (2012). "Sustenance, Abundance, and the Place of Food in United States Histories." In Kyri Claflin and Peter Scholliers, eds. Writing Food History: A Global Perspective (Bloomsbury): 72-86.
- Amy Bentley, editor (2011). A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Era (Bloomsbury).
- Amy Bentley, Warren Belasco, Carolyn de la Pena, and Psyche Williams-Forson (2011). “The Frontiers of Food Studies.” Forum Section, Food, Culture and Society, Vol, 14, No. 3(September): 301-314.
- Daniel Bender with Rachel Ankeny, Warren Belasco, Amy Bentley, Elias Mandala, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, and Peter Scholliers (2011). “Eating in Class: Gastronomy, Taste, Nutrition, and Teaching Food History.” Radical History Review, 110 (Spring): 197-216.
- Leora Auslander, Amy Bentley, Leor Halevi, H. Otto Silbum, and Christopher Whitmore (2009). “AHR Conversation: Historians and the Study of Material Culture,” American Historical Review (December): 1355-1404.
- Amy Bentley (1998). Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).