About
Olivia Stowell's research and writing focus on race, embodiment, and temporality in contemporary television and popular culture, particularly investigating the construction of racial identities and narratives in culinary television. Her work explores how popular media enables, forecloses, or projects different racial futures and possibilities in identity formations, intergroup relations, and narratives, drawing connections between the time we spend “escaping” reality through popular media and the power relations that organize that reality.
By conceptualizing food and cooking as an entry point to interdisciplinary analysis, she asks how the culinary is entangled with race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and power on television. In both her research and her pedagogy, she is committed to frameworks that center justice, equity, and accessibility.
Recent & Forthcoming Publications
“It’s Top Chef, Not a Personality Contest: Grammars of Stereotype, Neoliberal Logics of Personhood, and the Performance of the Racialized Self in Top Chef: New York” in New Review of Film & Television
“There’s Certainly a Lot of History Here, but We’re Here to Roast Oysters: Afterlives of Transatlantic Exchange in Top Chef: Charleston” in Television & New Media
Recent Public Writing
"Our Bodies, Our Time Machines" in Novel Dialogue
"Introduction: Dark Academia" in Post45 Contemporaries
"The Time Warp, Again?" in Post45 Contemporaries
"Adriana's Abs and the Return of Low-Rise Jeans" in Avidly: A Channel of the L.A. Review of Books
"History as Metaphor" in Post45 Contemporaries
