Professor of Philosophy and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, Lisa Heldke, received the 2015 Faculty Scholarly Achievement Award on May 2 at the College’s Honors Day Convocation.
Award recipients are nominated for this honor by fellow faculty members based on professional accomplishments regarding research activities in private, public, or corporate settings; publication; presentations at scholarly meetings or conferences; and exhibits or performances.
Heldke holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and music from Gustavus, along with a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Her areas of interest and expertise include American philosophy, feminist philosophy, and perhaps most notably, the philosophy of food. She published the book Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer in 2003 and is co-author of a forthcoming book titled, Philosophers at Table: The Philosophy of Food. Heldke has also edited several publications including Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food with colleague Deane Curtin, and Oppression, Privilege and Resistance: Theoretical Readings on Racism, Sexism and Heterosexism with colleague Peg O’Connor. Heldke is also currently co-editor of Food Culture and Society: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research.
Heldke has frequently been invited to give keynotes and other lectures at various conferences and symposia. Most recently she was one of two plenary speakers at the 35th annual Salisbury University Philosophy Symposium, which was titled “What’s on Your Plate” Food, Politics and Identity.” She was also a principal speaker at the University of Iowa’s Food For Thought Symposium, where she presented a talk titled, “We’re All Parasites: Eating, Guts and Fundamental Philosophical Categories.”
At Gustavus, Heldke is the founder and coordinator of the Kitchen Cabinet, an advisory committee to the College’s Dining Service. She served as the College’s Sponberg Chair in Ethics from 2006-2012 and received a Gustavus Presidential Faculty-Student Collaboration Grant in 2014.
One faculty colleague who nominated Heldke for the award said, “Lisa Heldke is an internationally recognized leader in the burgeoning area of philosophy of food…she has been invited to address audiences in Uppsala, Taiwan, and Hamburg, as well as throughout the United States. She has published her own work widely as well as helping to organize the entire field through her work as an editor. Nor has she kept her scholarly work disconnected from the rest of her Gustavus career: she has mentored student research collaborators and is the founding spirit behind the Kitchen Cabinet, which has creatively broken new ground in showing how the Dining Service can be an integral part of a liberal arts education.”
First awarded in 1986, the Faculty Scholarly Achievement Award was reestablished in 2004 and is now announced during the annual Honors Day Convocation.
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