curated exhibition

Food Worlds

The Philippines and its diaspora are a culinary landscape. A global archipelago of scent, sight, sizzle, and spice. An empire of eating memories. 

 

Food Worlds assembles artists and scholars who together create a map of the world through Filipino food. And what a rich, unending series of combinations and juxtapositions that has turned out to be. Worlds, plural.

 

As the number of sources compiled in “Filipino Food Resources” suggests, there is already a vibrant conversation about Filipino food worlds. We invite you to explore our virtual exhibition as it unfolds from April to June 2014, and we look forward to your comments and thoughts. Please share! 

 

Curated by Clare Counihan and Sarita See.

 

In addition to our generous contributors, we would like to thank the following organizations for allowing us to republish works included in Food Worlds:
Berg/Bloomsbury Academic Press
Maya Besa Roxas, on behalf of the family of Doreen G. Fernandez
Gastronomica
Open Media
Our Own Voice and Rowman Little
Penguin Press
University of California Press
 
Exhibition List:
Tria Andrews, “Chicken and Rice, Vito Cruz, Manila”
Michael Arcega, SPAM/MAPS
Roberto Ascalon, “Spam” 
Nerissa Balce, “The Meanings of Marrow” 
Amy Besa, “A Conversation with Historian Alex Orquiza” 
Sita Bhaumik, Letter to an Indian Grocery Store, “To Curry Favor” 
Eileen Castillo, “The Head is the Best Part/September 29, 2013” and “Santelmo” 
Clare Counihan, Filipino Food Resources
Kay Cuajunco, Bibingka
Doreen Fernandez, “Culture Ingested” (with Barbara Kischenblatt-Gimblett) 
Jessica Hagedorn, “Sprikitik” 
Laura Kina, “Black Market” and “Okinawa—All American Food”
Robert Ku, "SPAM" from Dubious Gastronomy
Martin Manalansan, “Immigrant Lives and the Politics of Olfaction in the Global City” 
Tim Manalo, Balut
Johanna Poethig, Placesetting 
Melissa Rosete-Wolfe, Orientalist Gift Wrap
Dennis Somera, “getoffthegravytrain,” “tomorrow tamari’maybe,” and “The Brick Oven” 
Aileen Suzara, “Searching for the Land of Salt” 
Aimee Suzara, “Litany for the Sea” 
Jerry Takigawa, False Food
Wesley Ueunten, “Okinawa Diaspora Blues” 
Imin Yeh, Interview with Johanna Poethig 
 
 
Endnote:
1Doreen G. Fernandez, “Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Filipino Food.”

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Clare Counihan

b. 1977
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Clare Counihan earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and her B.A. in English Literature from Duke University. Her research focuses on contemporary southern African experimental literature and the relationship between narrative form and national belonging for unbeloved subjects. She is also deeply interested in food: eating it, cooking it, understanding the ways it reflects and mediates our identities and interactions.

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Sarita Echavez See

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Sarita Echavez See was born in New York City but raised as an "embassy brat" moving from city to city around the world. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she first became involved with U.S. women of color politics, especially the arts and culture movement. She obtained her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. While studying in New York City, she met the Filipino American artists and writers who inspired and continue to inspire her teaching and scholarship. In 2013, she joined the faculty of the University of California, Riverside, where she is an associate professor of Media and Cultural Studies. She previously taught at Williams College, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching interests include Asian American and Filipino American cultural critique, postcolonial and empire studies, narrative, and theories of gender and sexuality. She is the author of the book-length study The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), in which she argues that contemporary Filipino American forms of aesthetic and performative abstraction powerfully expose and indict the history of American imperialism as itself a form of abstraction. She is at work on the book-length project “Against Accumulation,” which is a study of the politics of accumulation in the American museum and university and of the politics of anti-accumulation in Filipino American theatre, writing, and visual art. She was one of the core organizers of the 2011 conference "Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide" held at the University of California, Riverside, and she has served as a member of the working board of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association. In her work with the Center for Art and Thought and its focus on the contemporary medium of the digital, she envisions CA+T to be a transnational venue for more meaningful, reciprocal encounters between artists and scholars, and she is committed to fostering new forms of literacy, rather than tutelage, and to the transformation, rather than the mere transmission and replication, of knowledge.

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  • Born: New York, NY, USA
  • Based: Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Alexander Orquiza

b. 1980

Alex Orquiza is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. He is a historian of the United States and the world, American cultural history, food history, immigration, and the Philippines. His forthcoming book, Taste of Control: Food and the Filipino Colonial Mentality Under American Rule, will be published by Rutgers University Press.

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Amy Besa

Amy Besa is a native of the Philippines and with her husband and business partner, Romy Dorotan, also from the Philippines, owns and operates Purple Yam in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, New York. Previously, the couple owned the Filipino restaurant Cendrillon in New York, which was open from 1995 to 2009.

In 2006, Amy and Romy co-authored Memories of Philippine Kitchens (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2006), which won the IACP [interntaional Association of Culinary Professionals] Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship in the Quality of Research Presentation.

The book describes the melding of native traditions with those of Chinese, Spanish, and American cuisines. They have spent years tracing the foods of the Philippines, and in the book they share the results of that research. From Lumpia, Pancit, and Kinilaw to Adobo and Lehon (the art of the well-roasted pig), the authors document dishes and culinary techniques that are rapidly disappearing and in some cases unknown to Filipinos whether in the Philippines or abroad.

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  • Born: The Philippines
  • Based: New York, NY, USA

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Balut

Tim Manalo

2013 Resin, wood, motor, LEDs. 24 in. x 24 in. x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Tim Manalo

b. 1988
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Tim Manalo was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Growing up in a city rich with multiculturalism, he has always been exposed to Philippine culture through the city’s large Filipino community. A graduate of OCAD University’s sculpture and installation program, Manalo explores ideas of hybridity and identity in his works. He has an extensive background as a sculptor and fabricator for companies, catering industries focused in interior design, commercial outdoor displays, and costume and props. Currently, he continues his art practice in the heart of downtown Toronto. He is also very involved with the Filipino arts community, volunteering as an arts-based workshop facilitator for newcomer and at-risk Filipino youth.

In the piece Balut, I reflect on my position as someone who was born and raised in Canada but whose parents originated from the Philippines. This work is about my Filipino upbringing conflicting with the Westernized norm that I was confronted with during lunchtime in elementary school. Because Filipino dishes were not recognized as mainstream food, it resulted in my Filipino shame as a child as I would try to assimilate to the culture of the classroom. Balut is a hard-boiled duck fetus egg. In the Philippines it’s a popular delicacy, but in North America it’s a taboo. Balut in Tagalog also translates as “pack up” in English, which goes back to the origins of my Filipino upbringing and family migrating from the Philippines. Mimicking the light box used in harvesting balut eggs, the light inside the bag’s hole turns on only when it’s daytime in the Philippines and turns off when it’s nighttime—a daily reminder of our connection to a homeland that helped raise us, especially through food.

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  • Born: Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Based: Toronto, ON, Canada

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Balut

Tim Manalo

2013 Resin, wood, motor, LEDs. 24 in. x 24 in. x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Tim Manalo

b. 1988
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Tim Manalo was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Growing up in a city rich with multiculturalism, he has always been exposed to Philippine culture through the city’s large Filipino community. A graduate of OCAD University’s sculpture and installation program, Manalo explores ideas of hybridity and identity in his works. He has an extensive background as a sculptor and fabricator for companies, catering industries focused in interior design, commercial outdoor displays, and costume and props. Currently, he continues his art practice in the heart of downtown Toronto. He is also very involved with the Filipino arts community, volunteering as an arts-based workshop facilitator for newcomer and at-risk Filipino youth.

In the piece Balut, I reflect on my position as someone who was born and raised in Canada but whose parents originated from the Philippines. This work is about my Filipino upbringing conflicting with the Westernized norm that I was confronted with during lunchtime in elementary school. Because Filipino dishes were not recognized as mainstream food, it resulted in my Filipino shame as a child as I would try to assimilate to the culture of the classroom. Balut is a hard-boiled duck fetus egg. In the Philippines it’s a popular delicacy, but in North America it’s a taboo. Balut in Tagalog also translates as “pack up” in English, which goes back to the origins of my Filipino upbringing and family migrating from the Philippines. Mimicking the light box used in harvesting balut eggs, the light inside the bag’s hole turns on only when it’s daytime in the Philippines and turns off when it’s nighttime—a daily reminder of our connection to a homeland that helped raise us, especially through food.

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  • Born: Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Based: Toronto, ON, Canada

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Balut (day)

Tim Manalo

2013 Resin, wood, motor, LEDs. 24 in. x 24 in. x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Tim Manalo

b. 1988
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Tim Manalo was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Growing up in a city rich with multiculturalism, he has always been exposed to Philippine culture through the city’s large Filipino community. A graduate of OCAD University’s sculpture and installation program, Manalo explores ideas of hybridity and identity in his works. He has an extensive background as a sculptor and fabricator for companies, catering industries focused in interior design, commercial outdoor displays, and costume and props. Currently, he continues his art practice in the heart of downtown Toronto. He is also very involved with the Filipino arts community, volunteering as an arts-based workshop facilitator for newcomer and at-risk Filipino youth.

In the piece Balut, I reflect on my position as someone who was born and raised in Canada but whose parents originated from the Philippines. This work is about my Filipino upbringing conflicting with the Westernized norm that I was confronted with during lunchtime in elementary school. Because Filipino dishes were not recognized as mainstream food, it resulted in my Filipino shame as a child as I would try to assimilate to the culture of the classroom. Balut is a hard-boiled duck fetus egg. In the Philippines it’s a popular delicacy, but in North America it’s a taboo. Balut in Tagalog also translates as “pack up” in English, which goes back to the origins of my Filipino upbringing and family migrating from the Philippines. Mimicking the light box used in harvesting balut eggs, the light inside the bag’s hole turns on only when it’s daytime in the Philippines and turns off when it’s nighttime—a daily reminder of our connection to a homeland that helped raise us, especially through food.

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  • Born: Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Based: Toronto, ON, Canada

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Balut (night)

Tim Manalo

2013 Resin, wood, motor, LEDs. 24 in. x 24 in. x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Tim Manalo

b. 1988
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Tim Manalo was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Growing up in a city rich with multiculturalism, he has always been exposed to Philippine culture through the city’s large Filipino community. A graduate of OCAD University’s sculpture and installation program, Manalo explores ideas of hybridity and identity in his works. He has an extensive background as a sculptor and fabricator for companies, catering industries focused in interior design, commercial outdoor displays, and costume and props. Currently, he continues his art practice in the heart of downtown Toronto. He is also very involved with the Filipino arts community, volunteering as an arts-based workshop facilitator for newcomer and at-risk Filipino youth.

In the piece Balut, I reflect on my position as someone who was born and raised in Canada but whose parents originated from the Philippines. This work is about my Filipino upbringing conflicting with the Westernized norm that I was confronted with during lunchtime in elementary school. Because Filipino dishes were not recognized as mainstream food, it resulted in my Filipino shame as a child as I would try to assimilate to the culture of the classroom. Balut is a hard-boiled duck fetus egg. In the Philippines it’s a popular delicacy, but in North America it’s a taboo. Balut in Tagalog also translates as “pack up” in English, which goes back to the origins of my Filipino upbringing and family migrating from the Philippines. Mimicking the light box used in harvesting balut eggs, the light inside the bag’s hole turns on only when it’s daytime in the Philippines and turns off when it’s nighttime—a daily reminder of our connection to a homeland that helped raise us, especially through food.

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  • Born: Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Based: Toronto, ON, Canada

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Bibingka

Kay Cuajunco

2014 Video 10m 30s Courtesy of the artist.

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Kay Cuajunco

b. 1986
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Kay Cuajunco is a queer pinay activist, educator, and filmmaker. She was born in Guam and is currently based in Oakland, CA. As a granddaughter of Filipino farmers, she reclaims her connection to land through her work organizing for food justice, and she finds healing and creative inspiration cooking for cultural survival. Her first film Roots of Struggle, an anti-imperialist love story revealing the intimate violence of the military-industrial-complex on queer youth, premiered at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival in San Francisco, screened at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit and the Assata Will Rise showcase at the Eastside Arts Alliance, and was awarded best short at the Oakland Pride Film Festival in 2013. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Arts from San Francisco State University where she wrote her thesis on critical pedagogy and farmworker solidarity movements, focusing on the ideas on Paulo Freire and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Bibingka is a short film that explores how recipes tell stories of migration and cultural survival through the lens of Filipino foods. Behind every recipe there are countless memories of celebration, ritual, and comfort that allow us to reclaim our connection to the land, family, and home. Bibingka is one of the first Filipino desserts I learned how to cook with my mom and the smell of which always reminds me of home. Throughout the silent journey of making this dessert from looking through the aisles for ingredients to putting it into the oven, you can hear stories about Filipino food to narrate the feelings and memories of love, care, absence, and frustration that come up while cooking. Featuring voices from the Filipino diaspora, Bibingka awakens our senses to the urgency to keep the legacy of our traditional foods alive.

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  • Born: Agana, Guam
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA

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Black Market

Laura Kina

2013 Oil on canvas. 30 in. x 45 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Laura Kina

b. 1973
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Laura Kina is an artist and scholar based in Chicago, Illinois. She is a Vincent de Paul Associate Professor of Art, Media, & Design at DePaul University and identifies as “hapa, yonsei, Uchinanchu.” Born in Riverside, California in 1973 to an Okinawan father from Hawaiʻi and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, Kina was raised in Poulsbo, Washington, a small Norwegian town in the Pacific Northwest. She received her M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001, where she studied with noted painters Kerry James Marshall and Phyllis Bramson. She earned her B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994 and was inspired by her teachers Michiko Itatani and the late Ray Yoshida.

Kina’s artwork deals with themes of distance and belonging, and her research is focused on Asian American and mixed race identity and history. Her artwork has exhibited across the United States and in India and Japan, including at the Chicago Cultural Center, India Habitat Centre, Nehuru Art Centre, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Spertus Museum, and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Her solo exhibitions include Blue Hawaiʻi (University of Memphis Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art, Memphis, TN, 2014); Sugar (Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL 2010); A Many-Splendored Thing (Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL, 2010); Aloha Dreams (2007) and Hapa Soap Operas (2003) at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Miami, FL; and Loving (Grand Projects, New Haven, CT, 2006). Her artwork has been published on the cover of Franklin Odo’s Voices from the Canefields: Folks Songs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawaiʻi (Oxford University Press, 2013); Cathy Schlund-Vial’s Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing (Temple University Press, 2011); and in publications including Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, edited by Adebe DeRango-Adem and Adrea Thompson (Inanna Publications, 2010); Jillian Nakornthap and Lynn Stromick’s Embracing Ambiguity: Faces of the Future (Cal State Fullerton Main Art Gallery, 2010); and Staci Boris’s The New Authentics: Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation (Spertus Museum, 2008).

Laura Kina is also the coauthor, along with Wei Ming Dariotis, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013). The National Endowment for the Arts funded her curation of “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art” at the DePaul Art Museum and the Wing Luke Museum. She is a 2013 recipient of the Ragdale/3Arts Foundation Residency and Fellowship. Kina is a founding member of the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) biennial conference and a founding member and managing editor of The Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies. Diversity MBA Magazine selected Kina as one of the 2012 “Top 100 Executives & Emerging Leaders Under 50.”

 

Photograph by David Scheele. 

My artwork is about themes of distance and belonging, and I focus on the fluidity of cultural difference and the slipperiness of identity. Asian American history and mixed race representations are subjects that run through my work. I start with autobiographical impulses and draw inspiration from popular culture, textile design, as well as personal and community photographic archives and oral history interviews. I collect these images, stories, and histories, and I see what is missing, what is not being told, what is not obvious, and I go hunting for it. I am interested in the overlap, fusion, disjuncture, or vibration that happens when I bring back the missing pieces and put them together.

“Okinawa -- All American Food” and “Black Market” capture the remnants of war and a continued American military presence in contemporary Okinawa. Both paintings are from my Blue Hawaiʻi exhibition, which compresses time and space between Okinawa and Hawaiʻi. The exhibition is on view through March 27, 2014 at the University of Memphis Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art in Memphis, TN. To view the complete series and download the exhibition catalog visit http://www.laurakina.com/newwork2013.html

Set in present day Okinawa, Japan, the works are based on snap shots of in between spaces that I took on the way to meet my extended family and visit official tourist destinations. “Black Market” features a roadside black market where American processed food products from discounted US military exchange stores (e.g, BX, PX, NEX, MCX) are resold to locals. For many Okinawans, including my family, who grew up under US occupation (1945-1972), this junk food elicits a sense of nostalgia for their childhood. Products such as Spam, Vienna Beef, Dole canned fruit, and Folger’s Coffee, which may seem low brow at best in a US food world context, are viewed as markers of upward mobility. “Okinawa -- All American Food” captures an A&W billboard in front of a colonized urban Okinawan landscape in which power lines scrape across the sky and the view is crowded with cement apartment buildings and only one traditional red ceramic tiled roof can be seen in the distance. The A&W mid-century carhop waitress offers up a platter of American food: hamburger, hot dog, fries and two root beer floats. The billboard references the ongoing impact of the post-World War II years. In the foreground a painted strip of brightly colored bingata fabric points to the independent Ryukyu Kingdom and courtly dancers, which are presently reduced to a tourist framework and relegated to the ancient past.

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  • Born: Riverside, CA, USA
  • Based: Chicago, IL, USA

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Chicken and Rice, Vito Cruz, Manila

Tria Andrews

2012 - 2013 Poem. Courtesy of the author.

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Tria Andrews

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Tria Andrews is a Ph.D. candidate in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley and a graduate of the M.F.A. program in Fiction at San Diego State University. Her dissertation, “Education on the Reservation: Extracurricular and Culturally-Relevant Programing,” examines educational activities for youth on an Indian reservation from the founding of a boarding school in the late nineteenth century to the present day. The dissertation compares colonial education paradigms with the culturally-relevant curricula at tribally-run juvenile detention facility to ask how Native thinkers have moved beyond the programming to innovate tribal programs for youth. This research is informed by over seven years of tutoring and teaching yoga to incarcerated adolescents.

In addition to writing her dissertation, Tria is currently completing a collection of poetry, titled “Dead Center of the Heart.” This collection highlights the experiences of Native Americans and Filipinos as a result of American colonial policies and their legacies. Tria founded and co-facilitates the Race and Yoga Working Group through the Center for Race and Gender at UC Berkeley and teaches for Poetry for the People, Prison University Project, and University of San Francisco.

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  • Born: Tulsa, OK, USA
  • Based: Berkeley, CA, USA

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Culture Ingested: On the Indigenization of Philippine Food

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Doreen Gamboa Fernandez

2003 - 2014 Criticism. 13 pages. Courtesy of Gastronomica, Stella Kalaw, and Christina Quisumbing Ramilo.

Gastronomica 3.1 (Winter 2003): 58-71.

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Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

b. 1942

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University and Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt), winner of two book awards; The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (with Jonathan Karp); Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (with Jeffrey Shandler); the edited volume Writing a Modern Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Salo W. Baron, which won a National Jewish Book Award in 2006; among others.

She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, received the Mlotek Prize for Yiddish and Yiddish Culture, honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Haifa, and Indiana Univeristy, and the 2015 Marshall Sklare Award for her contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry. She was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on Advisory Boards for the Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Berlin, and the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. She also advises on museum and exhibition projects in the United States, Lithuania, Albania, and Israel.

 

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Doreen Gamboa Fernandez

b. 1934-2002

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez was born on 28 October 1934 to Aguinaldo Severino Gamboa of Silay, Negros Occidental and Alicia Lucero Gamboa of Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija.

She obtained her A.B., major in English and History in 1954 from St. Scholastica's College, Manila and completed her M.A. in English Literature (1956) and Ph.D. in Literature (1976) from the Ateneo de Manila University. She began teaching at the Ateneo de Manila in 1972 and chaired the departments of Communication, English and Interdisciplinary Studies. She was a member of the editorial boards of Philippine Studies, Filipinas Journal of Philippine Studies, and The Asian Theatre Journal. She would have rendered thirty years service in October 2002.

In 1998 she was recognized with Metrobank Foundation's Outstanding Teacher Award.

She taught literature, composition, creative as well as critical writing, and journalism. Her research included cultural, literary, theater and culinary history, on which she has written for scholarly and popular publications and had regularly been invited to speak at international conferences and symposiums.

She was twice a recipient of the Fulbright Asian Scholar in Residence Award (1983, Ohio University Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute; 1992, Michigan University Seminar on Southeast Asian Literatures in Translation).

A prolific writer, she authored the Iloilo Zarzuela: 1903-1930 (1978); In Performance (1981); Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1994); Face to Face: The Craft of Interviewing (1995); Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History (1996); Fruits of thePhilippines (1997); Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, On Site, In the Pot (2000). With Edilberto N. Alegre, she co-authored "The Writer and His Milieu (1984) and Writers and Their Milieu (1987, recipient of National Book Award); the Lasa series on dining in Manila and the provinces (1989, 1990, 1992); Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1988); and Kinilaw: A Philippine Cuisine of Freshness (1991).

She wrote video scripts as well: Tikim, a video documentary on Philippine food (1989, Philippine Information Agency); Panitikan on Philippine literature (1992, CCP), which earned first prize, video documentary category from the Film Academy of the Philippines; and Dulaan on Philippine contemporary theater (1994, CCP).

She was a columnist of The Manila Chronicle, Mr. & Ms. magazine, the Philippine Journal of Education, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Food magazine. She has contributed numerous articles in journals, periodicals and books, including to The Oxford Companion to Food (1999, Oxford University Press).

She was editor and contributor to the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (1994, Cultural Center of the Philippines); contributor to the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1995, Routledge), and with Resil Mojares to Modern Southeast Asian Literature in Translation: A Resource for Teaching (1997, Arizona State University); and editorial consultant as well as contributor to the 10-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People (1998, Asia Publishing Co Ltd).

She was co-founder of the Babaylan Theater Group (1973, with Nicanor G. Tiongson), and the Cultural Research Association of the Philippines (1975). She was a member of the board of trustees of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), and the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, among others. She was also a member of the Manila Critics Circleand of the judiciary for the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.

She received the Achievement Award from the National Research Council in 1997, and in 1999 she was recognized with the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts (Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Philippine Centennial Commission), honoring 100 Filipinos who helped shape the arts in the Philippines in the last century (1898-1998).

She was married to interior designer Wili Fernandez.

 

Photograph by Stella Kalaw.

location

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  • Born: The Philippines
  • Based: Manila, Philippines

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