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Professor Christine
Barbour Office:
Woodburn Hall 406 |
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A little personal background: I was born in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, and grew up on Long Island, New York. I came to IU as a junior in 1976. Been here in
Bloomington ever since. I live out in the country with my husband and two
wonderful dogs. My stepkids have graduated and are off on their own -- one
trained as a geologist and lives with her husband and their kids, Elena Grace
and Asher Michael, in Durango, Colorado, the other was a landscape architect
but is now a Montessori teacher. She and her husband are the
parents of Amelia Marguerite and Paloma Sage, and they live in Portland,
Oregon. My husband, who also teaches political science, and
I are authors of an American politics textbook: Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in
American Politics. I am also the coauthor, with Matt Streb, of
a critical thinking reader, Clued in to Politics. Among the fun
things I do in conjunction with my textbook writing is making regular current
events posts on KTRBlog
-- Keeping (up with) the Republic. I’ve been a slacker of late but hope to
pick it up again with the election season. Meanwhile, as politics has gotten
more contentious, I have branched out into food writing for some gentle (and
delicious) relief. I used to write a biweekly food column
for the Bloomington Herald Times, and now I am the food editor for Bloom Magazine. My cookbook, Indiana
Cooks! Great Restaurant Recipes for the Home Kitchen,
with Scott Feickert, photos by Tom Stio, came out with Indiana University
Press in the summer of 2005, and Home Grown
Indiana: A Food Lover’s Guide to Good Eating in the Hoosier State,
with Scott Hutcheson, came
out this last summer. Meanwhile I have been doing some other freelance
food writing projects and experimenting with food photography, and I blog.
Challenging, but fun! I bring my interest in food together with my
fascination with politics in a class on Politics and Food which I teach for
the Hutton Honors College. The project currently near to my
heart is a book I am writing about Apalachicola
-- a small fishing village in the Florida Panhandle that is trying to figure
out what it wants to be when it grows up amid plenty of pressure from
developers, tourists, second home owners, conservationists, the fishing
industry, state government, and even the people upriver in Atlanta.
It's a great story about local politics, wonderful food, and fascinating
people, and it's a joy to work on. We bought a small cottage in Apalach
in 2004 and try to get down there when we can for a shot of sun and small
town life, and some excellent seafood. In another food related activity,
I am a co-director of Slow Food
Bloomington. Slow Food is an international movement with an active U.S. organization that aims to fight
the encroaching wave of fast food culture by promoting a way of eating that
is local, seasonal, leisurely, and convivial. What could be better than
that? I've written about Slow Food here,
here,
and here.
There is a Slow Food on Campus Group as well, so if you are interested, let
me know and I can direct you to the right people. We live our own version of the
slow life out in the wilds of Bloomington, where we are visited by lots of
deer, raccoons, wild turkeys, and the occasional cow. We used to have a
great vegetable garden but it takes a lot of upkeep and we've kind of fallen
behind. Once upon a time we would grow eight or more different kinds of
eggplants (my favorite food) and over a dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes,
but more recently it's been slim pickings. Thank heavens asparagus and
morels come back by themselves!! We also like to travel, and have
been to Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as all over the United States. We
lived in Colchester, England, for a year but my favorite place in the world
is France (not unrelated to my love of food!) We go every chance we
get. |