Participant Info

First Name
Gabriella
Last Name
Petrick
Country
United States
State
MA Massachusetts
Affiliation
Website URL
Keywords
Food, Food Systems, Sustainable Agriculture, Agriculture, Environment, Industrial Food, Food Science, Food Technology, History of Science and Technology, Sensory History, Sensory History of Taste, 20th c. America, Canning, Freezing, Iceberg Lettuce, Pie, Soda, Wine, Wine Industry, Hospitality Management, Food and Beverage Management
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Gabriella M. Petrick, Ph.D. received her degree from the University of Delaware as a Hagley Fellow. Her interdisciplinary research on food combines the fields of the history of technology, sensory history, environmental history and the history of science. Additionally Dr. Petrick’s training at the Culinary Institute of America, Cornell University and at several wineries in Napa and Sonoma Counties has shaped her theoretical approach to the history of taste. Her first book project, tentatively entitled Industrializing Taste: Food Processing and the Transformation of the American Diet, 1900-1965, analyzes how new food processing techniques transformed the foods available to American consumers as well as how housewives incorporated these new industrial foods into their family’s diet over the course of the last century. She is also finishing a second book project, Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter: Taste in History, for the sensory history series at the University of Illinois Press that looks at the importance of taste historically. Her new project looks at the globalization of wine in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and how scientific inquire and technological innovations have changed the taste of wine in the glass. She has won many awards for her scholarship including the Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Society for the History of Technology, the W. Gabriel Carras Award for Junior Scholars from the Steinhardt School, New York University. She has also won both National Science Foundation and USDA grants. She has published in the Journal of America History, Agricultural History, History and Technology, among other journals and edited volumes. She has appeared on the History Channel, the Food Network, NPR, CBC and comments in publications such as The Atlantic and the Washington Post.

Recent Publications

Gabriella M. Petrick, “‘Purity as Life’: H. J. Heinz, Religious Sentiment, and the Beginning of the Industrial Diet,” Special Issue on Food, Trust and Technology History and Technology.(March 2011): 37-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2011.548972

Gabriella M. Petrick, “Larding the Larder: Designing Taste for the Modern Age” The Senses & Society (November 2010): 382-387.

Gabriella M. Petrick, “An Ambivalent Diet: The Industrialization of Canning” Magazine of History (July 2010): 35-38. Special issue on innovative ways to teach the history of technology.

Gabriella M. Petrick, “Feeding the Masses: H.J. Heinz and the Creation of Industrial Food” Endeavour (March 2009): 29-34. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.11.002

Gerard J. Fitzgerald and Gabriella M. Petrick, “In Good Taste: Rethinking American History with Our Palates,” Journal of American History (September 2008): 392-404. First Author. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/95.2/fitzgerald.html

Gabriella M. Petrick, “’Like Ribbons of Green and Gold’: Industrializing Lettuce and the Quest for Quality in the Salinas Valley, 1920-1965,” Agricultural History (Summer 2006): 269-295. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3744817.pdf?acceptTC=true

Gabriella M. Petrick, “Lonely at the Top: Women Food-Service Executives,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 39:3 (June 1998): 54-60.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
US
Expertise by Geography
North America
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Environment, Food History, Material Culture, Rural & Agrarian History, Science, Technology