Samuel Dorf is cooking up a yearlong exploration of how food connects people, places and stories.
As University of Dayton’s Alumni Chair in the Humanities, Dorf has organized programming around the theme of food and culture during the 2025–26 academic year. Events include a UD Food and Culture Festival in February, and a campus residency by culinary historian Michael Twitty.
Dorf, professor of musicology in the UD Department of Music, was awarded a $10,000 Special Projects grant from Culture Works to support his programming. The grant program funds arts and cultural initiatives that engage the Montgomery County community.
Dorf hopes this year’s theme will reach beyond classrooms and lecture halls, creating space for students, faculty and the Dayton community to come together.
“The humanities is about storytelling — how we tell our stories and celebrate the ways in which we tell our stories,” he said. “Whether it's through religion and faith, or literature, history and philosophy, food touches on all of these things. I figured this is a great way to bring everything together.”
Dorf said the idea for the festival grew out of his admiration for Twitty, an African-American Jewish writer, culinary historian and educator. Twitty’s approach to reimagining the meals of his enslaved ancestors and using food to confront history in his book The Cooking Gene inspired Dorf to think differently about his own field.
Dorf is a musicologist and dance historian who works with classical texts and modern reception of the ancient world. His book, Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi: 1890-1933, examined the interaction among scientists, humanities scholars and artists as they sought to perform and reinvent ancient Greek music and dance in turn-of-the-century Paris and Delphi.
In addition to exploring the cultural history of food, the programming highlights the resilience and creativity in Dayton’s food scene.
According to The Foodbank Dayton, food insecurity in Montgomery, Greene and Preble counties was estimated at 15.3% for 2023. Montgomery County has the highest overall food insecurity in the region, with more than 114,000 residents affected.
“A lot of these stories about food in the Dayton region focus on the negative,” Dorf said. “There are food deserts, but in food deserts, people still eat. And people still find joy in their food.”
The February festival will feature local organizations such as the Hall Hunger Initiative and Gem City Market, along with restaurants like Wheat Penny and Mazu, to showcase local and international food traditions through storytelling and shared experience.
The 2026 events include:
- Serving Plates and Serving Stories: A Conversation with Dayton Culinary Artists at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, in the Roger Glass Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Free and open to the public.
- Stories of Growing and Giving: Food, Access and Justice in the Dayton Region at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 3, in the Jesse Philips Humanities Center’s Sears Recital Hall. Free and open to the public.
- A keynote address by Michael Twitty at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in the Roger Glass Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Free, ticketed event.
- Dayton Opera performances of Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appetit (1981) and Shawn Okpebholo’s The Cook Off (2023) at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6; and at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7.
Fall 2025 semester events included “Tasting the Middle Ages,” a November talk at Joui Wine Bar in Dayton, where Bobbi Sutherland, associate professor in the UD Department of History, discussed medieval food and drink.
A partnership with the Collaboratory’s Ethnosh program will bring faculty and Dayton residents together for discussions over meals at immigrant-owned restaurants across the Dayton region.
The Dayton Opera performances are centered on cooking and performance — one inspired by Julia Child and another about a cooking competition.
Kathleen Clawson, Dayton Opera artistic director, said Dorf’s programming enriches the Dayton community by validating that simple acts, such as personal cooking hobbies and passing down family recipes, can be sources of profound, shared stories.
“This validation gives every audience member a personal entry point into the artistic themes, fostering a deeper sense of community connection and shared heritage across Dayton,” Clawson said. “The pairing of music and food is successful because opera is a powerful medium for storytelling, and by centering it on the relatable, universal experience of cooking, we make the art form highly accessible.”
She said this collaboration promises more than simple entertainment — it is a meaningful cultural and historical educational experience.
While Dayton celebrates food and culture separately at annual events such as the Greek and Italian festivals, this year’s Alumni Chair programming intends to unite them. For Dorf, chefs, bakers and restaurateurs — alongside dancers, painters and musicians — are all part of the same creative community: artists who use their crafts to tell stories. In this case, food is the universal connector.
“We all eat,” he said. “Food is a place where we can all taste our past and imagine our future, because we all have to figure out what’s for dinner tomorrow.”
For tickets and information on these and other Food and Culture events, please visit the Alumni Chair website.
Top photo: Author and culinary historian Michael Twitty.
Middle photo: Samuel Dorf