In this talk, Dr. Alcantara argues for the importance of creating space for community-based praxis, of multifaceted academic selves, and a critical decolonial analysis of our role as researchers. Her research centers on the role of food as a site of community resistance and resilience. Bioarchaeologically, she studies a population from the Postclassic (AD 1325-1519) site of Tepeticpac, Tlaxcallan. As the Aztec Empire expanded across Central Mexico, Tlaxcallan remained a site of resistance. She argues that community foodways, visible through dietary isotopes, were key to this resistance. Through her fieldwork in Tlaxcala, Dr. Alcantara collaborates with grassroots organizations, particularly the Mercado Alternativo de Tlaxcala, to understand how many of these ancient foodways continue to be sites of contemporary food sovereignty movements. Her perspective on food sovereignty has been further deepened in her role as a Mexican-American graduate student living and studying in Nashville. Collaborating with the Latinx immigrant community, she repurposes anthropological theory into a hands-on community cooking series called Sazón Nashville, demonstrating how food traditions and food knowledge influence both nutrition and resilience in Latinx immigrant communities in the US.
