Jessica Harris

Jessica is the author of 10 critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including: “Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking,” “Sky Juice and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking,” “The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking,” “Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food From the Atlantic Rim” and “The Martha’s Vineyard Table.” Jessica is working on “High on the Hog,” a narrative history of African American cuisine, to be published in 2010 as will her book on the rum culture of the Caribbean. Jessica has lectured on African-American foodways throughout the United States and abroad and has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas. Jessica holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, Université de Nancy, France, and New York University. She is the inaugural scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair in African-American Material Culture at Dillard University in New Orleans, where she has established an Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Jessica is also professor of English at Queens College, C.U.N.Y.