Nancy Neiman is the Mary Wig Johnson Professor of Teaching at Scripps College. Her most recent book, Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures, analyzes the conditions under which markets result in just outcomes. Before joining the Zócalo/Scripps College event “What Does a Feminist Foreign Policy Look Like?,” Neiman chatted in the green room about why she relates to artichokes, falling in love with Hanoi, and her guilty pleasure: Doritos.
What is the last good book that you read?
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman. It’s this fabulous narration of the lives of young Black women in the early 20th century prior to flapper culture. These women were challenging Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, marriage. It’s a beautifully written book and challenges a lot of assumptions that we make about history and the crisis of the Black family. I highly recommend it.
If there was a historical period you could go back to, where would you pick, and why?
I’m a hippie at heart. I was born in ’65, so not quite old enough to engage in that whole protest movement—the culture, the music, all of that… so I would want to be a teenager at that time.
What’s the last good song you listened to?
Sara Bareilles sings a version of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” And it is so hauntingly beautiful. She just brings so much to it. I hadn’t listened to her that much. But then I listened to her do that cover, and most of her songs are not covers, but I listened to her do that, and then I went back and downloaded like all of her music.
If you did not live in the U.S., where would you live in life?
On my last research trip, I visited Southeast Asia for the first time. And I fell in love with Hanoi. So I could see living in Hanoi, Vietnam, for a period of time. The people are amazing. The food is great. It’s culturally rich and dynamic. And there are really beautiful things about it—the mountains and the water. So, yes, Hanoi.
If you could be any vegetable, what vegetable would you be and why?
An artichoke. It’s similar to an onion in the sense of, like, peeling back layers. I also have the protective outside, and I’d like to think, a big heart. That only came to me because I actually made artichokes a couple days ago. And I was like, oh, I like artichokes, and then I realized it’s actually a decent answer as I was talking.
What’s your favorite meal?
I love raw oysters. I don’t know that it’s a whole meal, although I’ve made a meal out of it. But I’m a texture person, so I just I love the mouthfeel. And all the varieties are slightly different, so there’s a subtlety to them as well.
Do you have a guilty pleasure?
I teach food politics. So I am all about, you know, the corporate influence over public policy and all of the terrible things that go into processed food. All of that. But my guilty pleasure—so it’s really guilty—is Doritos. Don’t tell any of my students!