What's THIS project?
T
he Republic of Barbecue is a collection of more than 25 oral history audio interviews, accompanying photographs, and transcripts. We’re a book with more than 60 full-color photos, popular culture essays, first-person stories, and fun sidebars. And we’re an ongoing team, gathering oral histories, available to travel to talk about barbecue, and always ready for more adventures.
We’re a big community potluck—both in terms of the team behind it and our overall organization. We got started because a local nonprofit, the Central Texas Barbecue Association, was looking for someone to help them collect, document, and preserve the stories of barbecue culture around central 
Texas.
We’re also here because Southern Foodways was working to expand the Southern Barbecue Trail project.
The team began as a professor and her graduate class on American Foodways but has become so much more. Local barbecue practitioners and devotees came along, and we all started to imagine how we might take this picture of the life and times of Texas barbecue culture.
As with other SFA oral history projects, the original materials are archived at the University of Mississippi.
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Contact Elizabeth Engelhardt, UT Austin
to talk more about Texas projects.Contact Amy Evans Streeter, Southern Foodways Alliance
to talk about other Southern projects.