Alum Dana Ferrante Focuses on Intersection of Two Fields of Study: Food and Disabilities
Dana Ferrante (MET’23)
Writer, Editor, Producer, and Independent Food Studies Scholar
MA, Gastronomy
2023 Excellence in Graduate Studies Award Winner for Gastronomy
This interview was originally published in fall 2023. Dana has since accepted the position of writer-editor at the Urban Institute.
What motivated you to earn your master’s degree at this point? Why did you choose to fulfill your goal at Metropolitan College?
When I applied to the MA in Gastronomy program, I did not know there were other people like me—people who not only enjoyed making and eating food, but who wanted to ask big, complicated questions about food and food systems. In the personal statement I submitted with my application to the program, I wrote about wanting to learn how to make these big food questions relevant to a wider audience. I believed the program would help me develop the storytelling, research, and critical thinking skills to do so.
Three years later, I can say the program has given me the opportunity to accomplish all of this and more! I feel so lucky to be a part of the food studies community, and to have had the opportunity to grow as a researcher and writer during my time in the Gastronomy program.
What do you find most fascinating about the discipline of Gastronomy? Do you have a particular focus within the broader field?
My current focus is the intersection of food studies and disability studies. For my master’s thesis, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 disabled people living in Greater Boston. I wanted to understand their approaches to procuring food, cooking, and eating amidst ableist socio-cultural and physical environments. In my thesis, I explore some of the barriers disabled people face while accessing food at the grocery store or cooking in their own kitchens. However, my central focus is the adaptability, creativity, and agency disabled people exert while navigating inaccessible environments.
I discovered my interest in this area while taking Food and the Senses (MET ML 715) with Valerie Ryan in the fall of 2020. In the course, we read about the multisensory perception of flavor—this idea that eating is a sensory experience impacted not just by taste, but also olfactory, tactile, visual, and auditory cues. We also studied how taste is a physical act, sensation, and experience, as well as a perspective that emerges from a larger web of social, cultural, environmental, and bodily factors. In other words, there are many ways to taste, and many ways to know food. We were engaging with these concepts at a time when there was a lot of media coverage about COVID-19 causing people to lose their sense of taste and smell. This somehow led me to ask: why do we continue to think of taste so narrowly, as simply sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami? And what would a more inclusive concept of taste look like? I started reading anything I could find on the intersection of food studies and disability studies, and haven’t stopped since.
Congratulations on your high achievement in the Gastronomy program and your Award for Excellence in your studies! Looking back, what do you consider to be the main ingredients of your success?
To borrow from a disability justice concept, interdependence! When I reflect on my thesis, in particular, it’s clear to me that it takes a village to successfully complete a long-term research project such as a master’s thesis. There are no “lone geniuses” in research. I would have never been able to complete or defend my work without the people who participated in the study, my advisors, the scholars who researched the topic before me, and the friends and family I leaned on for support. Although I was writing about interdependence in my thesis, it still took me a while to understand and embrace that interdependence underlies every research project.
Is there a particular course or project that enhanced your experience in the Gastronomy program? Please explain.
One of the most enriching aspects of the Gastronomy program has been the opportunity to organize events. I found it really rewarding to think about how to translate a broad and/or thorny topic in food studies into an engaging, virtual event suitable for a general audience. Event organizing gave me the opportunity to learn new skills and connect with people in and outside the program at a time of social distancing and pandemic protocols.
In 2021, I co-organized the Living Landscapes conference with program alum Danielle Jacques (MET’22). Danielle had this innovative idea of using foraging as a way to spark conversations around racism and settler colonialism in food and agriculture systems, and I was excited to help realize her idea. Looking back on that virtual two-day conference, I still don’t understand how we convinced such an incredible line-up of speakers to join us, including Gina Rae La Cerva, Alexis Nikole Nelson of @blackforager fame, and Sherry Pocknett, winner of the 2023 James Beard Award.
The success of Living Landscapes empowered me to organize another event series in 2022 called “Recipes for Accessibility.” The goal was to highlight the culinary skills and experiences of disabled chefs, while also sparking conversations and a deeper understanding of how ableism, as well as adaptability, functions in food spaces. Again, we had some incredible chefs and speakers join us, and the response to the event helped solidify my choice to research the alimentary and culinary experiences of disabled people for my master’s thesis.
These opportunities would have never been possible without the support of the program’s faculty and staff, as well as other students. I am eternally grateful to have completed my master’s degree in such an encouraging and supportive environment.
You were recognized by faculty and peers for your hard work and dedication to the Gastronomy program. What “words of advice” or encouragement have served as a guiding principle, or simply inspiration, for you? Any words of wisdom you would like to pass along to students starting in the program?
My advice for students starting the program is: don’t be shy about your questions, your passions, and your goals. Even if you’re not exactly sure what you’d like to get out of the program, that’s okay! Share as much as you can about your current interests with your peers, professors, and anyone else you might meet along the way. It can be intimidating, but in my experience, food studies is a very welcoming discipline. I have had folks I’ve met once send me everything from articles to Instagram posts after hearing about my interests or a question I have. It’s a supportive community, so don’t be shy about asking for help, sharing your ideas, or even emailing someone, “Hey, I read this and thought of that project you’re working on!”
Published September 2024