What We Talk About When We Talk About Food: Using Food to Teach History at the Tenement Museum

Abstract

Abstract The Tenement Museum's Foods of the Lower East Side neighborhood walking tour re–invents the food–based walking tour through a public historian's eyes. On this tour, visitors don't just taste different foods. They also discuss how both immigrants and U.S.–born citizens use food to shape their identities and define their communities. By tour's end, visitors come to understand how immigrants and U.S.–born citizens together create American culture in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side. A new indoor version of the tour adds additional content about local storeowners as well as more opportunities for visitors to talk and share stories.