Deborah Gewertz, G. Henry Whitcomb 1874 Professor of Anthropology, has been teaching in the Department of Anthropology since 1977. She is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous books and scholarly articles. Recipient of major grants from the likes of the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies, her latest three books focus on food systems in Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United States. They are
Yali's Question: Sugar, Culture, and History (2004, University of Chicago Press),
Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands (2010, University of California Press), and
The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food into the 21st Century (2013, University of California Press). Over the last few years, she has been documenting the return of a family farm in South Dakota from row crops to prairie grasses. This work has, serendipitously, led to her current project, an anthropology of extinction. The project centers on the numerous stakeholders concerned with an ancient fish whose ancestors "swam with the dinosaurs," the endangered the Pallid Sturgeon. During 2017-18, she will be delivering a major keynote at the meetings of the South Dakota Wildlife Society and the Raymond Firth Lecture at the meetings of the European Society for Oceanists.
Jessica Hejny, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, received her PhD in political science from the University of Oregon. She teaches classes in environmental politics and policy, food politics, environmental justice, climate change, and environmental social movements. Her current research projects examine the historical development of U.S. forest policy, and the relationship between political partisanship and environment over the 20th century
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Gary Lee '79, co-owner and Creative Director at Las Canteras Peruvian Restaurant in Washington, DC. Lee and executive chef Eddy Ancasi opened the restaurant in 2007. Lee is the award-winning restaurant's creative director, front of the house manager and bar director. His duties range wide, from supervising the restaurant's bar and wait staff to creating new dishes and cocktails in collaboration with Ancasi and the restaurant staff. Lee, who graduated from Amherst in 1979, is a journalist and writer by profession. Lee is a former Moscow Bureau chief for the Washington Post, where he was a staff writer for 22 years. He also served as a staff writer at Time Magazine. He lives in Washington, DC with his life partner of 16 years.
Rick López '93 is Professor at Amherst College in the departments of history and environmental studies. He teaches courses on the Latin American politics and culture and environmental history, as well as US Latino history, comparative fascism, and a team-taught interdisciplinary research seminar called "Wine, History, and the Environment." López completed his PhD at Yale University in 2002, is author of
Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State after the Revolution (Duke UP, 2010), and co-edited a collection on political violence in Southern Mexico. López has published numerous articles and essays on race, aesthetics, and nation formation in Mexican history. He is working on two new books. "Science, Nationalism, and Aesthetics in the Shaping of Mexico's Environmental Imagination" analyzes the role science and aesthetics in the development of Mexico's nationalist ecological imagination. "A Territory Cleaved: Nation, Nature, and Ethnicity on the Frontier" asks how people living on the US-Mexican border changed their relationship to nature during the nineteenth century, and what these changes can teach us about the dual processes of nation formation and environmental transformation. Since 2014 has served as Dean of New Students, with a focus on integrating the College's diverse student body into unified community in which members of all backgrounds thrive academically and personally.
Patricia B. O'Hara is the Lisa and Amanda Cross Professor of Chemistry and has been at Amherst College since 1983. Her current research is in biophysics, where she and her students use fluorescence spectroscopy to detect macromolecular dynamics and function. She served as Dean of New Students at Amherst College from 2010-2014. Her new interest in food science has led her to develop new courses in Molecular Gastronomy and Olive Oil Chemistry. With her husband, she spent a 2014-2015 sabbatical year exploring the production of olive oil in the Mediterranean and the Southern Hemisphere. In 2016, they each received their official olive oil tasting certificate from the UC Davis Mondavi Center. Their upcoming book, The Chemical Story of Olive Oil From Grove to Table is available from the Royal Society of Chemistry Press.
Betty Rosbottom (wife of Ron Rosbottom, Professor of French and European Studies at Amherst College) is a food writer, cookbook author, cooking teacher, and blogger. She has been a frequent contributor to Bon Appétit Magazine, and is a former weekly syndicated columnist for the LA Times Syndicate and the Chicago Tribune Media Services. She hosted "On the Menu" a popular PBS show aired in western New England. Her newest book, Soup Nights was published last fall. She majored in French at Newcomb College of Tulane University, and studied at the Sorbonne her junior year. She lives in Amherst.
Jeremy J. Roush, Executive Chef at Amherst College, is originally from Colorado. He began his cooking adventures at a very young age working at his neighbor's restaurant. Inspired by the art of food and passionate to learn more, he earned his professional degree in 1989 from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Since that time he has had the pleasure to work in many facets of the hospitality profession as a chef and entrepreneur. His experiences have included Hyatt Hotels, Renaissance Hotels, The Biltmore Estate, Morrissey Hospitality and The Carolina Yacht Club, all prior to owning his own restaurant in Colorado. In 2003, the prestigious James Beard Foundation and Historic Hotels of America honored Chef Roush for his contributions to the culinary arts.
In September 2010 he joined the team here at Amherst College to inspire the Farm-to-Fork evolution in our dining program, crafting fresh, sustainable and wholesome meals to our students and greater community. When not at work, Chef Jeremy happily resides in Wilbraham with his wife Debbie, and as you might assume... they enjoy dining out.
