A Taste of Power
Food and American Identities
1st Edition
Published on 2. October 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
283 pages
978-0-520-28498-2 (ISBN)
Description
Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies. A Taste of Power examines culinary writing and practices as forces for the production of social order and, at the same time, points of cultural resistance. Culinary writing has helped shape dominant ideas of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that eating right is a gateway to becoming an American, a good citizen, an ideal man, or a perfect wife and mother. In this brilliant interdisciplinary work, Katharina Vester examines how cookbooks became a way for women to participate in nation-building before they had access to the vote or public office, for Americans to distinguish themselves from Europeans, for middle-class authors to assert their class privileges, for men to claim superiority over women in the kitchen, and for lesbian authors to insert themselves into the heteronormative economy of culinary culture. A Taste of Power engages in close reading of a wide variety of sources and genres to uncover the intersections of food, politics, and privilege in American culture.
Reviews / Votes
"Unique... thought-provoking... Recommended." CHOICEMore details
Series
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
8 b-w
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
363 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-28498-2 (9780520284982)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2015
1st Edition
University of California Press
€99.04
Article not available at the moment
E-Book
10/2015
1st Edition
University of California Press
€28.99
Available for download
Person
Katharina Vester is Assistant Professor of History at American University in Washington, DC, where she teaches in the American Studies program.
Content
Acknowledgments Introduction 1 * "For All Grades of Life": The Making of a Republican Cuisine In Search of an American Cuisine: National Identity and Food "All My Bones Were Made of Indian Corn": Maize, Revolution, and Democracy An American Painter's Palate: Raphaelle Peale's Food Still Lifes Domestic Virtue and Citizenship in the Work of Lydia Maria Child "Bread of Our Mothers": Sylvester Graham and the Health of the Nation Cooking Contest: Regional, Transnational, and Class-Based Cuisines in the Antebellum United States A Republican Cuisine 2 * "Wolf in Chef's Clothing": Manly Cooking and Negotiations of Ideal Masculinity Why the Way to the Heart Is Through the Stomach "Men, Meet the Kitchen": Inventing Manly Cooking Flesh, Blood, and Hemingway: Campfire Cooking and Rugged Masculinities Hard-Boiled Cooking, Femmes Fatales, and American Noir Silver Spoons in Their Hands: The Rise of the Gourmet Playboys in the Kitchen: Manly Cooking in the 1950s and 1960s "Will Cook for Sex": Recipes for Manly Cooking 3 * "The Difference Is Spreading": Recipes for Lesbian Living Serving Heteronormativity--Queering the Menu Labor of Love: Gender Normativity and Contradictions in Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks Tender Mutton: Gertrude Stein's Household Advice "La Cuisine c'est la Femme": The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book What Lesbians Eat: Identity, Food, and Same-Sex Desire How to Cook with Lesbians Digestif: Power, Resistance, and Food Notes Works Cited