Remembering Cindy Lobel Volume 50, Number 2
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Fall 2018 Remembering Cindy Lobel Volume 50, Number 2 This issue: Prof. Cindy R. Lobel of Lehman College of the City University of Remembering p. 1 New York and membership Cindy Lobel secretary of the Urban History President’s Letter p. 4 Association (UHA), tragically passed away on 2 October 2018 at Executive p. 5 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Director’s Report Center in Manhattan, only a few th UHA Award p. 7 hours after her 48 birthday. The Winners cause was breast cancer. Among historians, Prof. Lobel is best- UHA Election p. 10 Results known for her award-winning Urban Appetites: Food and Culture News and p. 12 in Nineteenth-Century New York Announcements (University of Chicago Press, UHA 2018 p. 13 2014), which was the recipient of Conference the 2013 Dixon Ryan Fox Manu- Recap script Prize, awarded by the New Photograph courtesy Paul Godwin. York State Historical Association, UHA Conference p. 15 and the 2016 Herbert H. Lehman RFP Gabaccia, James McWilliams, Prize for Distinguished Scholar- Roger Horowitz, William Grimes, Bibliographies p. 17 ship in New York History, award- Jane Ziegelman, Gergely Baics, ed by the New York Academy of and others – who were among the History. She taught urban history, first to recognize that the culinary New York history, and Introduc- arts and related social practices tion to New York Studies at were untapped subjects for Lehman. Prof. Lobel was a long- historians. As a Ph.D. candidate at time member of the UHA and the Graduate Center of the City served as the membership University of New York, Cindy secretary since 2014. Connect with us: worked as a Big Onion tour guide Urban History Cindy Lobel was a leading figure with fellow graduate students and Association among historians of foodways and future UHA members like Annie @UrbanHistoryA cities. She was part of a new Polland, Jennifer Fronc, and generation of “food historians” — Jeffrey Trask, while teaching as an Website: urbanhistory.org Andrew Haley, Hasia Diner, Donna adjunct lecturer at Baruch College Newsletter Editor: Hope Shannon, [email protected] FALL 2018, VOLUME 50 , N U M B ER 2 THE URBAN HISTORY AS SOCIATION NEWSLETTER PAGE 2 in Manhattan. Under the nineteenth century was an Prize citation praised Lobel for mentorship of Carol Berkin “empire of gastronomy.” Lobel her "lucid prose, illustrative and tutelage of Thomas explains how and why. anecdotes, and clear org- Kessner, Lou Masur, David anization," and "convincingly Urban Appetites employs food Nasaw, Barbara Welter, and demonstrat[ing] that the and eating patterns as a Ann Fabian, Lobel’s disserta- subject of food, its production vehicle to inform the evolution tion “Consuming Classes: and consumption, should take of politics, economics, Changing Food Consumption its rightful place in the history geography, culture, class, and Patterns in New York City, of American culture alongside gender in nineteenth-century 1790--1860” (2003) was the first the more established subjects New York City at the very draft of Urban Appetites. like politics, economics, and moment it was growing into Cindy then served as a visiting the arts. And she has done so the nation’s largest and most assistant professor at Barnard with admirable grace and influential city. Lobel's topics College in 2003-04, a Hench intelligence." are imbedded with a sense of Post-Dissertation Fellow at the place: food venues and Cindy Lobel was not one to American Antiquarian Society markets, markets and miss an opportunity to use in 2004-05, a visiting assistant neighborhoods, restaurants, history to speak to the present. professor at Connecticut groceries, retail food shops and In the insightful final chapter College in 2005-06, and finally private dining rooms. Urban of Urban Appetites, she as tenure-track assistant Appetites also devotes much compares issues of food professor of history at Lehman discussion to politics, particu- accessibility and culture with College in the Bronx in 2006. larly the transformation from those of the twenty-first She was promoted to associate the patrician politics of the century. “It is here,” writes one professor with tenure in 2014. early republic to the laissez reviewer, “where Lobel During those appointments, faire machine politics of the expands her readership not Cindy completely rewrote mid-nineteenth-century; how only to historians and food “Consuming Classes” and this evolution influenced the studies scholars interested in transformed it into Urban food choices and foodways of the evolution of New York’s Appetites. nineteenth-century New York- food culture, but also to Urban Appetites is unique for ers; Tammany Hall’s involve- activists, urban planners, and historically integrating the ment in groceries, saloons, and foodies concerned with the themes of ethnicity, class, public markets of New York; future of how New Yorkers gender, and culture in a daily the impact of regulation and live, shop, and eat.” Lobel’s practice shared by most deregulation of the food activism continued to her final humans - eating. Lobel reveals markets; how changing state days. Her husband Peter Kafka the culinary complexity of and municipal intervention wrote on her CaringBridge site nineteenth-century New York influenced the quality of the upon her passing: “We are not and how the diverse waves of food supply; and the interplay asking you to vote this fall: immigrants transformed not between politics and groceries Cindy would insist that you just the dietary landscape of in the immigrant and working- vote. Her last trip under her the city but also the public class wards of the city. Indeed, own power was to her local culture associated with Urban Appetites is as much a polling place for a primary last restaurants that serviced book about urban politics and month. You can do it, too.” specialized clienteles. Accord- the social impact of Cindy Renee Lobel was born in ing to James Fennimore provisioning as urban food- Philadelphia on 1 October 1970. Cooper, the Empire City of the ways. The Herbert Lehman She was the youngest of four FALL 2018, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 THE URBAN HISTORY AS SOCIATION NEWSLETTER PAGE 3 daughters born to Arthur and Foodstory: The Journal of the Everytown, “because gun Kaaren (Spivak) Lobel. Cindy Culinary Historians of New violence enraged Cindy.” In later graduated from The York, Winterthur Portfolio, Clio addition, a GoFundMe website George School in Newtown, in the Classroom, Entertaining has been established in which Pa., and earned her B.A. at from Ancient Rome to the anyone can contribute to a Tufts University in 1992, where Superbowl: An Encyclopedia, scholarship in Cindy Lobel’s she majored in history and Common-Place, The Encyclo- name at Lehman College, French. In addition to the pedia of New York State, and CUNY, or to the dedication of a UHA, she was a member of the The Big Onion Guide to New bench in Cindy Lobel’s name Organization of American York City. At the time of her within Brooklyn's Prospect Historians, the American death, Cindy had two forth- Park where she frequently Historical Association, the coming articles: “Not So Mean visited and jogged. Simply go Society for Historians of the Streets: Community and to the family’s GoFundMe page Early American Republic, and Activism in the Neighborhoods and use the comments section the American Studies of Postwar New York” in the to earmark your donation for a Association. Journal of Urban History and specific purpose. “Food in the Nineteenth- Lobel was also an active public Among historians and friends century American City" in The historian. While in graduate alike, Cindy Lobel will be Oxford Encyclopedia of school, she served as the remembered as a passionate American Urban History. She Education Coordinator at the teacher, a talented historian, a was also working on two book Wyckoff House Museum, a compassionate colleague, an projects: a study of oystering in historic house museum in the empathetic friend. She will be New York and the Chesapeake Canarsie neighborhood of missed by members of the focusing on the African Brooklyn. Her NEH-funded Urban History Association, her American oysterman Thomas podcast “A Walking Tour of colleagues and students at Downing, and a biography of Historic Harlem,” and article Lehman College, and by many, Catherine Beecher for the “We Built This City: Playing many others. “Lives of American Women” with Voice in a U.S. Urban series of Westview Press and History Class” were peda- edited by Carol Berkin. gogical exercises designed for Timothy J. Gilfoyle classroom use. At various According to her husband Loyola University Chicago times, Lobel worked with the Peter, Cindy passed away Urban History Association, Past President Journal of Urban History, Associate Editor Museum of the City of New "peacefully and without pain, York and the Lower East Side surrounded by her mother Tenement Museum on public Kaaren, her sisters Jodi, Susan programs and teacher and Debbie, and myself. We training. were playing her the Hamilton soundtrack on an iPhone." Lobel was the area editor and Cindy is also survived by her contributor to Savoring sons Benjamin and Jonah, ages Gotham: A Food Lovers' 10 and 8 respectively. Her Companion to New York City family has requested that those (Oxford University Press, 2015). interested in commemorating Her articles appeared in Cindy’s life to forsake the the Oxford Research flowers and instead make a Encyclopedia of American donation to the Triple Negative History, History Now, Breast Cancer Foundation, or to FALL 2018, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 THE URBAN HISTORY AS SOCIATION NEWSLETTER PAGE 4 President’s Letter beautiful evening. The second, won the awards that were held at the Hunter-Gatherer handed out at the Gala brewery across the road from Banquet on Friday evening. the City Roots organic farm and Recently published in the bar-b-q where the banquet Journal of Urban History, a happened afterwards, was report on the results of the equally extraordinary.