Ofstad Scholar Explores Food and Identity

Award-winning author and journalist Nina Mukerjee Furstenau will participate in a reading and Q&A session at 7 p.m. Feb. 15 in the Baldwin Hall Little Theater as part of the Ofstad Visiting Scholar Program.

Furstenau has a special interest in food and identity. Her food memoir, “Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland,” won the 2014 M.F.K. Fisher Book Award, and the International Grand Prize/Les Dames d’Escoffier for culinary literature, among other recognitions. She launched five business magazines and served as publisher of two of them for 15 years prior to coming to the University of Missouri Science and Agricultural Journalism program, 2010-18, where she was director of food systems communication.

A Fulbright Global Scholar in Kolkata, India, in 2018-19, Furstenau was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia. Her most recent book, “Green Chili and Other Impostors,” focuses on heritage foods and colonial power. Her textbook, “Food & Culture” has also recently been released.