Ashanté M. Reese

Dr. Reese is an Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies in the African & African Diaspora Studies Department at The University of Texas at Austin. Her work is at the intersection of critical food studies and Black geographies, examining the ways Black people produce and navigate food-related spaces. Prior to starting here PhD, Dr. Reese taught middle school at Coretta Scott King Leadership Academy. Her first book, Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C., takes up these themes through an ethnographic exploration of antiblackness and food access. The book won the 2020 Best Monograph Award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and 2020 Margaret Mead Award jointly awarded by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. Her second book, Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice, is a collection co-edited with Hanna Garth that explores the geographic, social, and cultural dimensions of food in Black life across the U.S. Dr. Reese was the recipient of the 2020-21 Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship.