Chin Jou is a historian of the late-twentieth-century United States whose work lies at the intersection of food, health, and inequality. Her most recent book, Captive Consumers: Hunger, Inequality, and Violence in American Prison Food, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press’s Justice, Politics, and Power series in Fall 2026. The book explores the historical, political, economic, medical, and cultural dimensions of prison food in the United States, with special attention to the mass incarceration era since the 1970s. She is also the author of Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help (University of Chicago Press, 2017), and research articles in American Quarterly, Journal of Urban History, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, International Labor and Working-Class History, Global Food History, and other refereed journals. Her work and/or expertise have also appeared in The Atlantic, National Public Radio, Washington Post, Scientific American, Politico, Smithsonian Magazine, Vice, and various media outlets in Australia. Her research has been supported by the National Humanities Center, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health.

Before joining Rice in 2024, she held the Brackenridge Chair in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio. From 2014 to 2023, she taught at the University of Sydney, where she received a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award.

Photo credit: Marie Etchegoyen, Rice University