Virginia Tech® home

Anna Zeide

Anna Zeide, Associate Professor

Anna Zeide, Associate Professor
Anna Zeide, Associate Professor. Photo by Steph Link.

Department of History
429 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger St.
Blacksburg, VA 24061
 zeide@vt.edu

Anna Zeide is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech. She is also the founding director of the Food Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences. She studies food as a way of understanding environmental change, dynamic cultural practices, consumer behavior, technology, health, and justice.

Her first book, Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (University of California Press, 2018) won a James Beard media award in 2019.

She co-edited Acquired Tastes: Stories About the Origins of Modern Foods (MIT Press, 2021), wrote the forthcoming US History in 15 Foods (Bloomsbury Press, 2023), and is working on a history of food waste and a family history project. 

  • Food Studies
  • Environmental History 
  • Consumer & Business History
  • 20th-century United States
  • History of Agriculture
  • Ph.D. in History of Science, Medicine, & Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • M.A.Ed. in Science Education, Washington University in St. Louis
  • B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies, Washington University in St. Louis

Books

Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (University of California Press, 2018)

Journal Articles

“Grocery Garbage: Food Waste and the Rise of Supermarkets in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States” History of Retailing and Consumption 5 (April 2019): 71-86.

Book Chapters

“Marion Harland, Tastemaker: How One Woman’s Influence Helped Build an Industry,” in Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food, eds. Benjamin R. Cohen, Michael Kideckel, & Anna Zeide (forthcoming with MIT Press).