Culinary historian Michael Twitty will deliver the keynote for University of Dayton’s Food & Culture Festival. He’ll talk about the history, myths, and controversies surrounding Southern food, race, and identity, at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 5 at the Roger Glass Center for the Arts.

The full festival, presented by UD’s Alumni Chair in the Humanities — Prof. Sam Dorf — runs Feb. 2 to 7.

Twitty is the author of Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew, which was named the Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Book of 2022. His 2018 book, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, received that year’s James Beard Foundation Book of the Year Award.

His latest book is Recipes from the American South, published in October.

Twitty is among those interviewed for Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s new four-part PBS documentary series, Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History, which premieres Feb. 3 at 9 p.m.

“I’ve been dreaming of bringing Mr. Twitty to Dayton before his book The Cooking Gene was published, as I read his articles and heard interviews with him,” Dorf said. “Mr. Twitty is a brilliant historian, a beautiful writer, and a transformative thinker whose writing on food, on race, on history, on Judaism has shaped me in so many ways.”

Twitty’s keynote is a free but ticketed event. For reservations, go to am.ticketmaster.com/rogerglass/buy.

To read the complete February 2026 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.