Janet Theophano, Ph.D. is adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She teaches classes in material culture, anthropology, communication, and folklore. She is the author of Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote (Palgrave, 2002) and co-editor of Diet and Domestic Life (Temple University Press, 1991). Her interest in ceramics was sparked by her research into women's lives and the aesthetics of the everyday.

The introductory essay for this web site and the essay "The Miner's Canary" were written by Janet Theaphano.