We’re thrilled to announce that we’re kicking off yet another winter/spring lecture series. We have a number of exciting speakers lined up and will be announcing details soon. Due to popular demand we have moved talks from Friday to Thursday evenings. Like last year we have also invited speakers from Europe and those talks will happen on weekend afternoons due to the time difference. We thank Tom Bigelow for his work in curating the series!

Our first talk will look at the history of popular interest in fungi and mushroom clubs. Tracing popular mushroom foraging to the 1880s DeDe-Panken will discuss an early iteration of American mycophilia which brought a new population of non-professional mushroomers into the field. Like today they sought a combination of gastronomic scientific and personal enrichment. She’ll argue that the mushroom fad legitimized women’s participation in citizen science by tethering foraging knowledge to elevated economical cookery and as a public safety necessity to prevent poisoning. Enthusiastic laywomen claimed space and belonging as collectors writers illustrators and club leaders. Yet while expanding opportunities for some privileged mycologists’ insistence on certain forms of expertise fueled exclusion along class race and ethnic lines. Ultimately this research seeks to elucidate tensions surrounding sustenance science and authority that remain with us to this day.

Madeline DeDe-Pankenis a Ph.D. Candidate in U.S. History at The Graduate Center CUNY. With broad interests in negotiations of gender knowledge and authority her research explores scientific and sustenance mushroom foraging at the turn of the twentieth century. She has held fellowships at the New York Botanical Garden and New-York Historical Society Center for Women’s History and currently resides in the Boston area where she works at The Mushroom Shop helping people take full advantage of edible varieties.