Mark Anthony Arceño, Ph.D.

I am the Senior Academic Program Coordinator in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University, as well as a graduate of the Department of Anthropology's doctoral program. In addition to teaching for Comparative Studies (Cultural Food Systems and Sustainability; American Food Cultures; and my newest course, The Sustainability Games [AU26]), I also teach for the Department of French and Italian (Mediterranean Food Cultures). I am the advisor to the Comparative Studies Graduate Student Group; the Chapter Leader of Slow Food Columbus; the editor of the Culture & Agriculture 'Sensorium'; and a previous Ohio Wines VIP Ambassador (see pg. 6).

Philippine-born and Metro-Detroit raised, I earned my B.A. from Albion College, where I majored in French and international studies, and concentrated in ethnic studies and public policy and service. In particular, the time I spent off campus was central to my development as a scholar and global nomad. I studied and conducted independent ethnographic research throughout South Africa, which I used to complete my Honors thesis addressing the then-upcoming English translation of the Roman Missal and its effect on members of South Africa’s multiethnolinguistic Catholic population. That said, most of my international experience is in France, where I studied in Paris and interned at AFS Vivre Sans Frontière, have co-/led high school summer programs, and conducted an ethnographic exploratory study on halal food consumption.

From 2010-2013, I worked at Denison University as its first Program Coordinator in the Office of Multi-Cultural Student Affairs. Alongside committee and programmatic work, I developed new initiatives including a number of food and culture programs. From 2015-2016, I worked at the Bob Evans corporate campus as its Product Development Coordinator.

Using the French notion of terroir as a conceptual framework, my fieldwork investigates place-based wine production in Ohio, USA, and Alsace, FRA, to examine how winegrowers understand and respond to changes in their landscapes amid times of change. I completed the French portion of my dissertation research as a Humanities and Social Sciences "Make Our Planet Great Again" Chateaubriand Fellow, which is sponsored by the Cultural Services of the Embassy of France. My previous Master's work focused on pictorial representations of food-based dietary guidelines.

I emphasize the importance of “learning through food,” i.e., learning about ourselves and each other through the foods we consume; the recipes which have been passed down, shared, and adapted over time; and the evolving meanings of meals and conviviality.

You can connect with me most readily via @learnthrufood or @aventuresavecremy on Instagram, as well as Learning through Food or Learning through Wine on Facebook.