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Krishnendu Ray

Professor, Food Studies; Director, Food Studies PhD Program

Nutrition and Food Studies

212-998-5530

Krishnendu Ray received his Ph.D. in Sociology from SUNY Binghamton in 2001. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Delhi University, India. Prior to joining the NYU faculty in 2005, Krishnendu was a faculty member and an Acting Associate Dean for Curriculum Development at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA).

A food studies scholar, he is the author of The Migrant’s Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households (Temple University, 2004) and The Ethnic Restaurateur (Bloomsbury 2016). He co-edited Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia (University of California Press, 2012), and special issues on "Street Vending and Global Cities" in Food, Culture & Society 24, 1 (Spring 2021), and "Culinary Cultures on the Move" in Verge Studies in Global Asias 9, 2 (Fall 2023).

Selected Publications

  • Krishnendu Ray, Jooyeon Rhee, and Tina Chen. Eds. Fall 2023. Culinary Cultures on the Move. Verge Studies in Global Asias 9.2, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • “Hands on Food. Theorizing the Present” Cultural Anthropology, ---. Ed. August 2021.
  • Krishnendu Ray, Jackie Rohel, and Noah Allison. Eds. Feb 2021. Special Issue of the journal Food, Culture & Society on Street Vending and Global Cities, Volume 24, no. 1. 
  • Issue of the journal Gastronomica 21.3. “Gastropolitics: Speaking in Tongues,” ---. 2020.
  • The Ethnic Restaurateur (Bloomsbury, 2016) 
  • “Fed by the Other. City Food and Somatic Difference,” Groniek. Eetcultuure (2015) No. 202, pp. 67-84.
  • “The Immigrant Restaurateur and the American City,” Social Research 81, (Summer 2014), pp. 373-396.
  • “Taste, Toil and Ethnicity: Immigrant Restaurateur and the American City,” Ethnologie francaise, (2014) XLIV, p. 105-114.
  • “Disreputable Cuisine and Circuits of Masculinity,” Himal SouthAsian (April 2013) 26, 2, pp. 26-42.
  • Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia (University of California Press, 2012).
  • "Dreams of Pakistani Grill and Vada Pao in Manhattan: Reinscribing the Immigrant Body in Metropolitan Discussions of Taste." Food, Culture & Society vol. 13. no. 4 (December 2010).
  • "A Taste for Ethnic Difference: American Gustatory Imagination in a Globalizing World." In Globalization, Food and Social Identities in the Asia Pacific Region, ed., James Farrar (Tokyo: Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture, 2010). (link)
  • Ray, Krishnendu and Tulasi Srinivas. Eds. 2012. Curried Cultures: Food, Globalization and South Asia. (Studies in Food and Culture List). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Ray, Krishnendu. 2004. The Migrant’s Table. Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households Philadelphia: Temple University Press —. 2022.
  • “Vernacular Taste and Urban Transformation: Towards an Analytics of Fun,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies DO ---. 2020.
  • Engaging Ethnic Restaurants to Improve Community Nutrition Environments: A Qualitative Study with Hispanic Caribbean Restaurants in New York City with M Fuster, K Guerrero, B Elbel, TTK Huang, Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 1-17.

Programs

Food Studies

The Food Studies program explores the cultural, historical, and sociological aspects of food and food systems.

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