Nicolaas Mink

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Contact 309-341-7983 nmink@knox.edu

General Interests
"I have many diverse interests when it comes to food and food systems. Although trained as a historian, my teaching and research now focus on developing and devising community-based, market-oriented food system reforms that empower students, small food producers, and local food businesses to create more just, sustainable, and equitable foodsheds.

I love teaching about food systems because they allow me to show students the interconnectedness of the world. Studying food brings together the local and the global into a singular narrative, and in the process reveals how seemingly disparate places and distant cultures interact with one another to create what we see on our plates."

Years at Knox: 2011 to present

Education
Ph.D., History, 2010, University of Wisconsin.
M.A., History, 2004, University of Montana.
B.A., History, 2002, University of Wisconsin.

Teaching Interests
Food systems

Selected Professional Accomplishments

Honors/Grants
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New Directions Research Grant, Knox College, Summer 2011.

Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation Research Award, Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of American History, Spring 2010.

Robert and Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies Research Award, University of Wisconsin, Fall 2009.

Governor Leroy Collins Award for best essay in Florida history by a graduate student for "Selling the Storied Stone Crab," Florida Historical Society, 2008.

Various Small University of Wisconsin History Department Research Grants, 2005.

A.B Hammond Western History Research Award (3), University of Montana, 2002-2004.

Publications
Fast Food: A History (book manuscript in progress), forthcoming 2013.

Salmon: A Global History (under contract, Reaktion Books, Edible Series), forthcoming 2012.

"Environmental Issues," "Steakhouse Chains," and "Key Lime." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2012.

"The Culinary Colonization of the American West." Reviews in American History 39 (September 2011): 458-463.

"Modified Fish Are Threat To Alaska's Wild Salmon." Sitka Sentinel August 9, 2011.

"Let's Not Stop at Salmon." Juneau Empire February 18, 2011.

"Having our Cake and Eating it, Too: Food's Place in Environmental History." (with Robert Chester) and "It Begins in the Belly," Environmental History 14.2 (April 2009): 309-323.

"Eating the Claws of Eden: Stone Crabs, Tourism, and the Taste of Conservation in Florida and Beyond," Florida Historical Quarterly (Spring 2008): 470-497.

"Selling the Storied Stone Crab: Eating, Ecology and the Creation of South Florida Culture," Gastronomica: Journal of Food and Culture 6:3 (Fall 2006): 32-43.

Presentations
"How Alaska's Salmon Became Wild," Kettleson Memorial Library, Sitka, Alaska, July 26, 2011.

Guest, "On Food Ecology," Progressive Radio Network, "Paradise Parking Lot," June 7, 2011.

"Making Fast Food," Lecture given for Earth Day, College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, April 21, 2011.

Panelist, "Restaurants of Northern Aggression: Food, Race, and Power in the Civil Rights Movement," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Washington D.C., April 2010.

Panelist, "‘Let Her Eat Out': Gender and Domesticity in the Postwar Restaurant," Paper presented as a participant in the Newberry Library's Seminar on Women and Gender, Chicago, Illinois, November 13, 2009.

Panelist (Invited), "The Techno-Cultural Food Narrative; or, What Historians can Learn from the Edison Deep Fryer," Brief talk given to Envirotech breakfast meeting at the Society for the History of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 2009.

Campus & Community Involvement
Member, Knox Food Coalition.
Salmon Education and Outreach Coordinator, Sitka Conservation Society.
Education Coordinator, Sitka Seafood Festival.
Volunteer, Scott McAdams for U.S Senate.

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