Oral History Projects

SNAP-Ed Oral History Project

Beginning in 2025, in collaboration with faculty in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food, & Exercise; Virginia Cooperative Extension, the Department of History; and VT Publishing, we began an effort to help document the history of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), which offers support for programs that foster healthy food choices and physical activity in communities across the U.S.

Southern Baking Oral History Project

Throughout 2022, the Food Studies Program supported an oral history project with The Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), led by Dr. Jessica Taylor and Dr. Danille Christensen, focused on the role of baking through public events like festivals and county fairs in Patrick County, Virginia. This oral history project explores the ways that home baking finds its way to public venues in this rural county. Local staples such as apple butter, pinto beans, bottled green beans, and jello salad show up on dinner tables and at community events, but so do bruschette and biscotti, samosas and vegan cakes. The interviews are archived as part of SFA's Southern Baking oral history archives, and you can find the collection here.