Syracuse University alumna Patricia E. Clark ’89, G ’93 vividly remembers the sights, sounds and smells of the fried chicken dinners the women in her church packaged up and sold to help pay the rent and other church expenses.“We would spoon potato salad and collard greens onto paper plates,” she wrote in a story that appeared Feb. 26 in the Syracuse Post-Standard. “Each dinner came with corn bread, two slices of white bread and Aunt Carrie’s signature bread pudding.”
The churchwomen from her childhood and the recipes passed down through multiple generations inspired Clark’s research on African American cookbooks. She will present her findings from 6-8 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 7, in E. S. Bird Library’s Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Room 114. Her talk, “Kitchen Chronicles: Early African American Cookbooks,” is the first of two lectures in the 2012 Fall Colloquium presented by the Department of African American Studies in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences. The colloquium is free and open to the public. Reduced-rate parking is available in SU’s Booth Garage.
Clark is an associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Oswego. Her research and teaching interests include late 19th- and 20th–century American and African American literature and culture, and modern and contemporary black women writers and theorists.
Clark is currently working on two book-length manuscripts tentatively titled “Recipe for a World: African American Women and Their Cookbooks in 19th- and 20th-Century” and “Post-Soul and the Future of Black Cuisine.” She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship (2005), the Diversity Award from the Rainbow Alliance SUNY Oswego, and several university-based grants and fellowships. Clark holds both a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and English and a master’s degree in English with distinction from SU’s College of Arts and Sciences and a Ph.D. in English from Miami University.
