“Where there’s flavor, there’s history:” A Look at New Orleans food Culture with Zella Palmer

Dr. Zella Palmer is a professor, food historian, author and filmmaker and serves as the Chair and Director of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program in African American Material Culture in New Orleans, Louisiana. In this podcast, she discusses the Ray Charles program, the importance of material culture, especially to African Americans and other historically marginalized groups,  her commitment to preserving the legacy of African-American and Native American culinary history in New Orleans and the South, and her creation of a multi-disciplinary food studies minor at Dillard. We also discuss the film she directed The Story of New Orleans Creole Cooking: The Black Hand in the Pot which underscores the centrality of African Americans to New Orleans’ famed Creole cuisine and her 2019 cookbook, Recipes and Remembrances of Fair Dillard: 1869-2019 which details not only recipes, but a culinary history of New Orleans and Dillard’s place in that history, her podcast “Culture and Flavor,” and the significance of food studies for students across a wide range of disciplines from history to global politics.