about

I am a cultural historian studying food and gender in the Maghrib & Mashriq. I’m currently an assistant professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I teach classes on the culture, gender history, literature, and food of the Arabic-speaking world. My book Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato is forthcoming in October 2025 from the University of California Press. 🍅

Food, kitchens, and cookbooks are at the heart of my scholarship. My research and writing begin with the premise that if we take culinary knowledge seriously in all its forms (written, oral, embodied) it can offer us new ways of understanding the world. Studying food and cooking teaches us about lived forms of culture that elude, refuse, and sometimes resist dominant narratives and categories we take for granted –– categories that tend to be foundational to how we understand ourselves and the communities to which we belong. I think of food as a starting point for writing cultural histories beyond the limitations of nationalist and colonial frameworks.

My scholarship has appeared in Gender & History, Middle Eastern Literatures, Gastronomica, Global Food History, Mashriq & Mahjar, the Journal of Women’s History and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies; other bylines include Eater and ArabLit Quarterly. I’m also the co-editor of Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean (University of Texas, 2021).

I have taught at Georgetown, Tufts, and the University of Maryland; I’ve also worked as a translator (Arabic to English) and have written a food blog since 2010.

I have degrees from Georgetown (PhD, MA) and from Yale (BA). My work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright program, the Social Science Research Council, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, among others.

people will talk: interviews & mentions

Food Studies in the Arab World: An Interview, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 44 (2024), 145-67

Tabkh al-afandiyya wa-tamatim ʿind ʿAbd al-Nassir (Efendiyya Cooking and Tomatoes under Gamal Abdel Nasser), by Mohamed Al-Rabiuo in al-Quds al-ʿArabi, March 2024.

Food Historian and Assistant Professor of Arabic Anny Gaul Receives NEH Grant, by Liz Tracy, University of Maryland College of Arts & Humanities, July 6, 2023.

Making Levantine Cuisine: New Texts Out Now, interview in Jadaliyya, March 11, 2022.

A “Simultaneously Hidden and Deliciously Obvious” History of Levantine Cuisine, interview in The Nation, February 22, 2022.

more

grants, fellowships, awards

Commendation, Sophie Coe Prize for Food History (2025)

Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities (2023)

Independent Scholarship, Research & Creativity Award, University of Maryland, College Park (2023)

Junior Faculty Summer Research Fellowship, College of Arts & Humanities, University of Maryland, College Park (2022)

Global Food History Prize for an Emerging Food Historian (2021)

Commendation, Sophie Coe Prize for Food History (2021)

First Prize, Literary Category, American Association of Teachers of Arabic Translation Contest (2018)

American Institute for Maghrib Studies Short-Term Research Grant (2018)

BSA-Pine Tree Foundation Fellowship in Culinary Bibliography, Bibliographical Society of America (2018)

Dissertation Research Travel Grant, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown University (2018)

Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (2016-17)

Multi-Country Research Grant, Council of American Overseas Research Centers (2016-17)

Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant, American Research Center in Egypt (2016)

Cherwell Studentship Award, Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery (2015)

Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellowship, American University in Cairo, Egypt (2013-14)

Fulbright U.S. Student Research Grant, Jordan (2012-13)