Suyash Kumar Neupane (Ph.D., 2025) was recently announced as the winner of the 2025 Warren Roberts Student Project Prize, awarded by the Folk Arts and Material Culture Section of the American Folklore Society, for his essay “Learning to Cook is Learning to Listen: The Crispy Case of Taruā.” The prize committee highlighted the strong connection between foodways and material culture in Suyash’s research, noting that his work offers a thoughtful engagement with the multisensorial qualities embedded in material culture. The work examines the multisensory dimensions of achieving the perfect "crispiness" in taruā (southern Nepali fritters), while also foregrounding the profound social and cultural meanings embedded in sound and texture within Nepali foodways.
The College of Arts