Food & Drink History Resources @Virginia Tech (and Beyond)

Join for a panel discussion featuring Assistant Director of Special Collections and University Archives Kira Dietz, our first Food Studies program intern, scholars who have used the Food Timeline, and others, to celebrate Virginia Tech's acquisition of this leading food history website and digital archive and learn more about its future.

This page includes resources related to "Food + Drink (History) Allowed: Collecting, Researching, + Collaborating in the Archives," a public talk given on October 29, 2021. The Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends and the Food Studies program at Virginia Tech co-sponsored this talk by Kira Dietz, Assistant Director, Special Collections and University Archives at Virginia Tech. The archives is home to a scholarly collection of more than 7,500 volumes and 125 manuscript collections related to food and drink history, with an emphasis on several topics/areas. In late 2020, we also took over management of The Food Timeline. This talk will introduce our collecting area and its history, highlight some areas of focus (including food technology + production, culinary education, and cocktail history in America) + favorite items, and share some future directions for our current work + collaborations. This page includes a video and the slideshow.

This page includes the slideshow for a virtual talk on cocktail history given in August 2020, "Tanked Up and Top-Heavy with an Applejack Gait: A Shotglass of American Cocktail History." Also included is a viewable version of my notes for this talk (please be aware that notes are information, not always complete, do not contain references, and may only represent part of what was presented--feel free to contact me if you have questions).

This page includes slides from a lightning talk on the father of the American cocktail, "Professor" Jeremiah (Jerry) P. Thomas, given at a conference in August 2020.

This page includes the slideshow from a talk in April 2016, "From the Archbishop to the Zombie: A Muddled History of the Cocktail in America," which also included a historic cocktail tasting.

This page includes a pdf version of a slideshow used in March 2016 titled, " Cookery, Cures, Cocktails, and Chores: Food History in Special Collections." This slideshow accompanied a talk, so it consists primarily of images from items in our collecting area.

This page includes slides from a talk given on February 25th, 2011, about materials in the collecting area related to household management and domestic economy.