Review of N. HUMBLE, The Literature of Food, 1860-present

European Journal of Food, Drink, and Society, 2022

Book review of The Literature of Food: An Introduction from 1830 to the Present, by Nicola Humble, London: Bloomsbury Academic, Hardback 2020, 368pp., ISBN 978-0- 8578-5455-1; Paperback 2020, 288 pp., ISBN 978-0-8578-5456-8.

Food in Society: Economy, Culture, Geography, 2001

ISBN 0 340 72003 4 (hbk); 0 340 72004 2 (pbk) http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780340720042/ PART I Hors d'oeuvre 1 A BACKGROUND TO FOOD STUDIES

Narodna umjetnost : hrvatski časopis za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2015

2022

Registration open: ASHF 2019, 2019

Symposium fee: €90 (until 15 September €75) Reduced fee: €45 (students, Friends of the Special Collections UvA). url: http://bijzonderecollectiesuva.nl/foodhistory/amsterdam-symposium-on-the-history-of-food/ registration: https://www.ashf.nl/subscribe (Post)colonial foodways: creating, negotiating, and resisting transnational food systems Because of its manifold effects on individuals, cultures, and countries, from the 15th century onwards the colonial era had far-reaching impacts on existing foodways. Colonial rulers often imposed exploitative food systems upon the colonized, resulting in relationships that have been perpetuated, mediated, and resisted to this day. Because of their troubling and complex legacy, colonial foodways have become an essential theme in recent histories of transnational food production, consumption and trade practices from early modern mercantilism to the present. By shifting the focus from two-way colonizer-colonized relationships towards (post)colonial networks and their various nexuses, truly transnational histories are emerging that decenter Europe and go beyond traditional narratives. Food history and (post)colonial history intersect in various ways. Theories about exploration and exploitation offer insights into (proto)capitalism and the consumption of commodities, the agency of populations in the Global South, the transfer of food technologies, and the ecological impact of restructuring and repurposing vast areas of land. Studying material culture and (post)colonial food customs, furthermore, advances an in-depth understanding of the historical negotiation of identities and ideologies. The hybridization of national and migrant cuisines, culinary (neo)colonialism, and shifting perceptions of gastronomic 'authenticity' all underwrite the continuing influence of the colonial era on how we speak about food and, subsequently, about ourselves.

Understanding the procurement, preparation, and consumption of food as a form of communication, critical/cultural scholars approach food and food related activities as texts, asking questions about power, identity, political economy, and culture. The emergent field of critical food studies represents a growing interdisciplinary interest in taking food seriously. Approaching cultural practices as the site of resistance to and incorporation into hegemonic social structures, cultural studies orients us towards questions regarding the politics of food practices with an eye towards social justice. Framed by an awareness of the performativity of cultural practices, both food studies and critical cultural studies engage questions of subjectivity, symbolic meaning, institutional power, identity, and consumption. Broadly speaking, critical cultural studies scholars examine foodways—the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the production and consumption of food—as (a) symbolic repertoires for the production of social identity; (b) a site of cultural performance; and (c) a metaphor for race, class, gender, and sexuality within popular culture. These areas overlap, reinforce, and problematize each other, and are not intended to provide an exhaustive account of the approaches critical cultural scholars take when integrating food studies into their research. As symbolic repertoires, food, foodways, and cuisine are often understood as integral to articulating identity around nationhood, race and ethnicity, class, and gender. Food, foodways, and cuisine provide potent examples of how symbols construct knowledge and meaning. As a site of cultural performance, foodways are understood as part of a cultural system embedded within a matrix of rituals, values, and practices that comprise the rhythm of daily life. Paying attention to food as performance reveals the intricacies of our understandings of and negotiations between self and community; nostalgia and the present moment; home and away; family and individual. Finally, cultural studies deconstructs the metonymic functions of food as presented in media texts. Methodologically, this research provides a textual analysis of how particular foodstuffs function rhetorically within media texts. Theoretically, it provides an important addition to our understanding of the workings of hegemony within the context of food as a metaphor for race, ethnicity, and gender, particularly on cable networks, reality TV, and in film.

East-West Cultural Passage, 2021

It is only befitting that an issue devoted to the burgeoning field of food studies should include the review of a book focusing on literary representations of food. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food edited by J. Michelle Coghlan comprises sixteen captivating essays authored by leading scholars who comment on literature and taste from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. The volume is structured according to a chronological perspective, pointing to crucial moments in the development of aesthetic taste, with a special emphasis on the anglophone world. The chronology of major works and events with which the volume opens reinforces the chronological perspective the editor has chosen for her volume. The volume displays a certain eclecticism in terms of method, postcolonial views mingling with historical, gender, critical race studies, or ecocriticism. The first literary texts in English-Beowulf, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Sir Gawain and the Green Knightare investigated from the perspective of the cultural capital invested in food. Thus, Aaron K. Hostetter reads in medieval feasts relations of strength and power but also keen ironical or satirical social comments. The position of prominence that food held in the early modern period is further scrutinized from the vantage point of the connections between the culinary and poetry. The making and consumption of food is cleverly transferred by Joe Moshenska to the realm of literature as early modern poets such as John Milton, Edmund Spenser or Ben Jonson reflected in their works on how close the art of the cook was to that of the poet. Despite Socrates'