2008 Scholar-in-Residence
Jessica B. Harris, PhD

Jessica B. Harris, PhD is the author of ten cookbooks documenting the foods of the African diaspora: Hot Stuff: A Cookbook in Praise of the Piquant, Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking, Tasting Brazil: Regional Recipes and Reminiscences, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, A Kwanzaa Keepsake, and The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food From the Atlantic Rim, On the Side, and The Martha’s Vineyard Table. She is currently working on a narrative history of African Americans and food tentatively entitled High on the Hog; African Americans and Food to be published by Bloomsbury in 2009.

A culinary historian, Harris has lectured on African-American foodways at The Museum of Natural History in New York City, The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as well as at numerous institutions and colleges throughout the United States and abroad. She was the first African-American woman to present a commencement address at the Culinary Institute of America and has also delivered the commencement address at the New England Culinary Institute. Dr. Harris has done consulting for Kraft Foods, Proctor and Gamble, Best Foods, and Goya Foods. Articles about Dr. Harris and reviews of her work have appeared in myriad publications, including The New York Times, Essence, Ebony, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle and The New Orleans Times Picayune.

In her over three decades as a journalist, Harris has written book reviews, theatre reviews, feature and beauty articles, and travel articles too numerous to note. She has written extensively about the culture of Africa, both in the motherland and in the Americas, particularly their foodways, for publications ranging from Essence to German Vogue. She is also the author of The World Beauty Book, a collection of beauty secrets from women of color around the world, the editor of La Vie Ailleurs, a multi-cultural French text, and the translator for Ton Beau Capitain by Simone Schwartz-Bart. She was also a restaurant reviewer for The Village Voice in New York City and has appeared on Cooking Live Primetime with Sara Moulton on the Television Food Network.

A tenured full professor at Queens College, C.U.N.Y. in New York City, Dr. Harris holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, the Universite de Nancy, France, and a doctorate in Performance Studies from New York University where her dissertation focused on the French-speaking theatre of Senegal.

She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. She is a board member of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Culture and the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, both in New Orleans. She is also a national and a life member of the College Language Association.

In August of 2007, Dr. Harris took a leave from her over 38 year tenure at Queens College to become scholar in residence in the Ray Charles chair in African American material culture with a specialty in food and folklore at Dillard University, a historically black college in New Orleans.

Read the article written for the IACP Conference "New Orleans: A Gumbo Pot of Cultures."