Principal Investigator Heather Paxson
Through telling the stories of American cheesemakers, The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America details the challenges of making a life and a living through artisan production. Artisanal cheeses are alive with meaning, and also with the activity of organisms large and microscopic. They are "unfinished" commodities -- living products whose qualities are not fully settled -- that embody old and new American ideas about taste, labor, and value.