Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz

Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz is the Director of Collections and Visitor Engagement at Stratford Hall, as well as the Director of Education and Historic Interpretation at Virginia’s Executive Mansion, and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley. She holds a BA in Africana Studies and History from The College of William & Mary and an MA and Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine, which was named as one of the top ten books on food of 2017 by the Smithsonian Magazine. You can find her most recent work in Audible’s The Great Courses on the history of sugar, and her contribution to the forthcoming cookbook California Soul, with celebrity chef Tanya Holland and Alice Walker.