Department and program:

• Anthropology, MA

Awards:

• SSSHRC-CGS Master's (2005-2006)
• University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship (2004-2005)

Research Focus:

A paper about sushi in 3rd year anthropology of globalization seminar sealed the deal – Sara was going to focus her MA research on food.  Combining that interest with the knowledge gained from her previous degree (namely, Latin American history and culture and Spanish language training) along with the opportunity to work on a larger project about Mexican migration with advisor Dr. Raymond Wiest, Sara did her MA fieldwork in both Alaska and Mexico.  There, she worked with Mexican migrants in both places to explore the relationship between food and identity.  Recipient of a SSHRC-CGS Master's Scholarship and, before that, a University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship, Sara is currently writing her thesis, which explores how transnational subjects negotiate their identities in relation to the food and food-related connections that they make between their Mexican and Alaskan homes.  She hopes that her project will provide some insight on the relationships and interconnections between migration, identity, and food and add to currently growing literature on the place of food and eating in contemporary society, with the finished product evoking how transnational subjects are simultaneously displaced/placed, travelling/dwelling, disarticulated/rearticulated, and faraway/nearby and how food is a marker and a material reality of this.
Sara will be presenting at conferences in Vancouver and Montreal, as well as at the American Studies Association 2006 Annual Meeting in Oakland, California where she will be part of an alternative session about food and the performance of transnational identity.