Texas Tech University Press and the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections are pleased to announce a new book series, drawing on UTSA’s extensive Mexican Cookbook Collection and TTUP’s publishing expertise.
The new book series title is “Indigenous Foodways of Texas and Northern Mexico.” It will explore, preserve, and propagate Indigenous food traditions, techniques, and histories from these regions. We are seeking projects that focalize the food confluences among people in Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.
“UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection is a rich resource for researchers, chefs, students, and food writers,” said Amy Rushing, assistant vice provost for UTSA Special Collections. “We are thrilled the Special Collections will be an integral part of the publication series. It aligns with UTSA’s mission as a Hispanic-serving institution by honoring and preserving Hispanic heritage.”
The book series editor is Adán Medrano, a chef and food writer whose work focuses on the native foods of Texas and Northeastern Mexico, the borderlands region to be explored in the new book series.
The books in the series will be designed for a general audience, and will emphasize:
- Historical cookbooks in the UTSA Mexican Cookbook Collection that could be republished for a new audience.
- Collecting and anthologizing historical materials—for instance, a compilation of pieces about the foods of South Texas and Northeastern Mexico throughout history.
- Popular history with Indigenous food as the subject.
The series will support scholarly books as well, particularly those that integrate with food studies programs; cultural histories of food, and even some anthropological, archaeological, and Mexican American studies scholarship, could be relevant to such a series. We will emphasize the work of scholars who are interested in incorporating their work into conversations with nontraditional (outside the academy) sources of knowledge and tradition.
Writers are encouraged to utilize and feature items from UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection in their work. The collection is the largest in the nation and includes:
- More than 2,500 Mexican cookbooks published in Spanish and in English, ranging in date from 1789 to the present.
- Over 100 manuscript cookbooks from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth and early mid-twentieth centuries.
- Significant holdings in regional cooking, including the largest collection of works by Josefina Velázquez de León.
- Books on herbs, medicinal plants, and ingredients native to Mexico
This exciting collaboration will prioritize promoting books that emphasize native ingredients and approaches, focusing on the connections between food and various topics such as climate change, history, colonialism, gender identity, economic circumstances, health, and other contexts that shape our understanding of food and self.
Explore Further:
Researchers interested in learning more about Special Collections should contact Amy Rushing and Steph Noell at UTSA’s Special Collections.
Interested writers may contact Adán Medrano at [email protected].
