Claire Bunschoten is an interdisciplinary cultural historian interested in issues of consumption, especially the entanglement of food, culture, and power in the modern United States.

Claire is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at Skidmore College where she teaches courses on food, the body, and the environment. She is currently at work on her first book, which tells the story of how vanilla came to serve as a code for social norms in the US. Before her time at Skidmore, Claire served as the Abbott Lowell Cummings Postdoctoral Fellow in American Material Culture at Boston University and as a Mellon Research Fellow in the Food Humanities at the New York Botanical Garden.

Claire holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. in History & American Studies from Bard College. Her writing has appeared in Food and Foodways, The Recipes Project, and Aeon, among other outlets.

You may follow Claire’s work on Blue Sky, Twitter, or LinkedIn. You may also contact her by email at cbunschoten[at]skidmore[dot]edu.

Photos featured on this site are by the author, Three Region Photography, or Marlon Co c/o NYBG.