Rachel Vaughn

Education

PhD, American Studies, The University of Kansas.

Bio

Dr. Rachel Vaughn (she/her) is a continuing lecturer in the UCLA Institute for Society & Genetics.  Her research engages the intersections of Food Studies, Waste & Discard Studies, Science & Technology Studies. She studies food access, food waste and high tech/low tech/no tech systems of food and waste management or redistribution, including how these technologies and systems unevenly impact public health and bodies. She is the author of single and co-authored works related to food, waste and health politics; and is co-author, co-editor and co-organizer of the 2017 Edible Feminisms: On Discard, Waste & Metabolism a Luskin Endowment for Thought grant-funded conference turned special issue of the multidisciplinary journal Food, Culture & Society. She is author of two manuscripts in progress:  Talking Food, Talking Trash: Oral Histories of Food Precarity from the Margins of a Dumpster; and Queer Toxic Soy: Gendered Food Fear Mongering on the intersectional health dynamics of pop culture worry over and scientific fascination with soy phytoestrogens. She teaches interdisciplinary courses like: Nature/Nurture Debates; Feminist Science & Technology Studies; Biotechnology & Society;  Race, Class & Gender in Food Science & Technology, SocGen 105b; Capstone 191s, among others. Dr. Vaughn is the recipient of research and writing grants through the UCLA Center for Study of Women; the Mellon Foundation; the Luskin Endowment, and EU policy grants in Portugal and Italy.

Selected Publications

Manuscript in progress, (under contract U of Nebraska Press): Talking Food, Talking Trash: Oral Histories of Food Precarity from the Margins of a Dumpster (projected for Winter 2026)

Forthcoming in Cultural Studies. “Waste, Capitalism’s Terminal Crisis, and Magnifying the ‘Out of Sight.’” Co-edited special issue by Rachel Vaughn and Michelle Yates, featuring 10 global waste scholars. Projected Winter 2025

“Queer, Toxic Soy & Estrogen Panic: Gendered Food Fear Mongering.” “Men and Nature” special issue of Media + Environment. Eds. Michelle Yates. U of California Press, 2023

“Viral Junk.” E-flux: special issue on Viral Theory, eds. Eben Kirksey. October: Issue 130

“On the Viral Politics of Wastewater Epidemiology.” Society & Space. April 2022.

“A Meditation on Food Waste, Imperfection and Accumulation.” E-Flux: issue on Food & Agriculture. June: Issue 128, 2021

Vaughn, Rachel and Michelle Rensel, “Why Do Some People Want to Manage Human Fertility?” eds. Souleles, Thaning and Gersel, People Before Markets: An Alternative Case Book. Cambridge University Press. 2021

“Compost and Menstrual Blood: Women Wastepickers and the Work of Waste Futurity” (May 2020). Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience special issue Chemical Entanglements: Gender & Exposure. DOI: https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v6i1.32379

“Food and/as Mutualism” (August 2020). Gastronomica: A Journal of Critical Food Studies, for a special issue on Food in a Time of COVID-19. Volume 20: 3. Pp. 108-110.

“Food, Blood, Nutrients: on Eating Placenta & the Limits of Edibility.” Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. August 2019. DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2019.1638127

Rachel Vaughn and Sarah Tracy, “Guest Editors’ Introduction: On the Creative Destruction of Food as Science.” Special Issue of Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, Edible Feminisms: On Discard, Waste & Metabolism, from a UCLA international conference. August 2019. DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2019.1638104

“The Politics of Clean: Representing Food Salvage and Dumpster Diners.” American Studies. Volume 57, Number 1/2 (Summer 2018), pp. 29-56. DOI: 10.1353/ams.2018.0024

“Choosing Wisely: Paralleling Food Sovereignty and Reproductive Justice” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. Volume 38, Number 3, 2017. Pp. 22-46. DOI: 10.5250/fronjwomestud.38.3.0022