Arthur Gordon, owner of Irregardless Café, is a pioneer in the local food movement.

Three alumni forge unconventional career paths with their Carolina liberal arts degrees.

Cecilia Polanco ’16 hopes to aid undocumented students through her food truck business.

Gini Bell ’08 forges new links for a healthier community.

Riana Lynn ’08: ‘I want to try to impact my community and get more minority entrepreneurs doing well.’

Richard Grausman ’59 inspires a love of cooking in underserved high school students.

For the next two years, the Carolina community will come together around a common table with food as the University’s new academic theme — exploring a plateful of topics, including food cultures and security, nutrition, world hunger, sustainable development and the impact of climate change.

We asked American studies professor Marcie Ferris about everything from using food as a lens to examine history to stereotypes about Southern food to her own go-to comfort meal.

Katy Clune (M.A. American studies/folklore) documented an example of global foodways in the rural American South through her project on Lao cuisine in Morganton, N.C.

Graduate student Victoria Bouloubasis and her partners at Vittles Films have captured the bilingual cacophony of Cliff’s Meat Market in a 15-minute documentary produced for the Southern Foodways Alliance.