The core cuisine of Southern food is established in the plantation South, within the world of slavery. To understand the plantation table, we must understand the relationship of enslaved people to Africa, to historical trauma, and their central role in food production. Their voice is the most poignant, expressive voice in Southern cuisine.

Most Southerners recognize when a story about their own experience feels off-kilter or offensive. But Southerners are also fascinated by the way their region is presented in popular culture. It is exciting to see how filmmakers take great care to present worlds in which race, region, and food are deeply intertwined.

The study of foodways - the intersection of food and culture - addresses a central issue in the humanities: how we connect the great dramas of history with the lives of ordinary people.

While I felt very much a Southerner as a child, being Jewish gave me an outsider's perspective. People look at region in a variety of ways, and I always paid attention to food. Food rises above other things for me. From a young age, I saw food as a barometer of cultural identity, and I was fascinated by how people defined themselves through their food traditions.

Americans are experiencing a general hunger for authentic regional cuisine, of which Southern food represents one of the best and oldest examples.

I think about what I eat every day. I try to eat as locally as I can and as healthily as I can. When you prepare a historic recipe that could as easily been eaten in the 1800s as in 2014, it is a powerful act. When you take that food and its associated memory and put it in your body, it becomes part of who you are. While most people do not think about it consciously, there is an honoring of history that happens during that meal.

Southern food derives its strength from many cultures. It's a melding of food cultures from Native Americans, enslaved African-Americans, and Europeans.