Anny Gaul, program head and recently promoted to associate professor of Arabic at the University of Maryland School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, received the 2026 James Beard Media Award in the reference, history, and scholarship category. The James Beard Media Awards highlight excellence in books, broadcast media, and journalism covering food or drink-related content. The book awards recognize cookbooks and other nonfiction food or beverage-related books that were published in the U.S.
Dr. Gaul was honored for her book Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (University of California Press, 2025). By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato — indigenous to the Americas — had become Egypt’s top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. In Nile Nightshade, Dr. Gaul shows how Egyptians’ embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt’s modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country’s food system.
Dr. Gaul is a cultural historian whose research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of food, gender, and culture in the Arabic-speaking world. She is the co-editor of Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean (University of Texas Press, 2021).
A graduate of Yale University, Dr. Gaul holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University.