Allison Carruth

Assistant Professor
Department: Department of English

Tel: (310) 825-4173
acarruth@humnet.ucla.edu
Personal Website

Education

PhD, Stanford University
BA, Grinnell College

Research Interests

American Literature, Post-1945 Fiction and New Media, Food Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Globalization Theory, Environmental Humanities, Women Writers

Allison Carruth conducts research on the cultural history of industrial agriculture, alternative food movements, and biotechnology, with a focus on post-1945 U.S. literature and visual culture. She is a co-organizer of the Food Justice and Prototyping Futures conferences and is involved with Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. Her first book, Global Appetites, argues for the centrality of American agribusiness and its imagined alternatives to the history of globalization. From Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers! (1913) to Novella Carpenter’s memoir Farm City (2009), the writers at the center of Global Appetites define a new literature of food that includes realist narrative, postmodern fiction, experimental poetry, cookbooks, and food manifestoes. Her second book project ("The Transgenic Age") examines how biotechnology has shaped and has been shaped by contemporary environmental discourse, as evident in speculative fiction, bioart, green architecture, and food activism. In addition, Professor Carruth is co-authoring a book entitled "Literature and Food Studies" with Amy L. Tigner (under contract with Routledge in the Contemporary Literature and Though series).