My name is Stephen Garfield, and I have been working on a slow-burning, year-long project focusing on this question:

How can displaced communities upholding traditional cuisine participate in a “model” food future?

I began collecting potential sources for the research during the Fall 2019 quarter, as a two-credit, in-program ILC developed with Professor Sarah Williams as part of the Eating in Translation program.

I am a Filipino-American. I was born in Hawaii, one of the most fascinating hot spots of intersecting foodways in the world. I have been studying food systems past and present for the last several years, and have spent fourteen years growing up in the pressure-cooked environment of professional kitchens.

I give this brief background because it shows how this research project–which has transformed into a yearlong, senior capstone body of work–serves as a perfect synthesis of my personal and academic identities.

It must also be mentioned that this endeavor has evolved in tandem with the COVID-19 global pandemic, among whose society-shaking effects include a breakdown of typical modern food systems. My plans for field study, whether in the form of participation in Filipinx food systems in Hawaii or interviews with Filipinx chefs in the PNW area have been sidelined by the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus.

This is both disappointing and illuminating. On the one hand, I get less of an understanding of the forms of the food system pre-coronavirus. But on the other, I have witnessed the unfolding of a tragic and inspirational story. I have seen in real time restaurants I planned to visit and chefs I planned to interview having to enact drastic changes to their business plans, showing incredible support to their communities, struggling to keep their livelihoods afloat. Some haven’t made it.

I hope that the confluence of all these various threads produces a piece of work that can show, in however small a way, how smaller, relatively isolated communities can come together under the banner of supporting each other.

Project Website(s):

https://wordpress.evergreen.edu/cefie-portfolio-s20-garfield/about-the-project/