ABSTRACT
When I heard that Museums ampentity Social Issues was assembling a volume on museums and food, I immediately felt compelled to submit something that would profile my professional activities at the nexus of these two worlds. As that tale alone might not provide sufficient fodder for an article, I decided to expand the story to explore what my three immediate spheres of work—museums, food, and faith—have in common. Perhaps this would help me to understand how, and why, I came to situate all three in a unique academic setting for the first time. As a caveat, I have no formal training in religious studies or theology. I came to the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) to work with the arts, and do not proclaim to teach the students about faith. What I have done is to provide “lens” classes that create new ways of examining faith. My lenses of choice have been museums and food. What do these have in common, and why was I drawn to both fields? First, they share the trait of interdisciplinarity. Second, they are both somewhat anthropological, and relate to the study of culture. What I will attempt to do here is to triangulate these three fields—museums, food, and faith—to examine the connective tissue between them and the ways in which they overlap.
