Food and Culture in Contemporary American Fiction

Food and Culture in Contemporary American Fiction

Author: Lorna Piatti-Farnell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-07-13

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1136645543

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Establishing an interdisciplinary connection between Food Studies and American literary scholarship, Piatti-Farnell investigates the significances of food and eating in American fiction, from 1980 to the present day. She argues that culturally-coded representations of the culinary illuminate contemporary American anxieties about class gender, race, tradition, immigration, nationhood, and history. As she offers a critical analysis of major works of contemporary fiction, Piatti-Farnell unveils contrasting modes of culinary nostalgia, disillusionment, and progress that pervasively address the cultural disintegration of local and familiar culinary values, in favor of globalized economies of consumption. In identifying different incarnations of the "American culinary," Piatti-Farnell covers the depiction of food in specific categories of American fiction and explores how the cultural separation that molds food preferences inevitably challenges the existence of a homogenous American identity. The study treads on new grounds since it not only provides the first comprehensive study of food and consumption in contemporary American fiction, but also aims to expose interrelated politics of consumption in a variety of authors from different ethnic, cultural, racial and social backgrounds within the United States.


Food and Culture in Contemporary American Fiction

Food and Culture in Contemporary American Fiction

Author: Lorna Piatti-Farnell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-07-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1136645535

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Establishing an interdisciplinary connection between Food Studies and American literary scholarship, Piatti-Farnell investigates the significances of food and eating in American fiction, from 1980 to the present day. She argues that culturally-coded representations of the culinary illuminate contemporary American anxieties about class gender, race, tradition, immigration, nationhood, and history. As she offers a critical analysis of major works of contemporary fiction, Piatti-Farnell unveils contrasting modes of culinary nostalgia, disillusionment, and progress that pervasively address the cultural disintegration of local and familiar culinary values, in favor of globalized economies of consumption. In identifying different incarnations of the "American culinary," Piatti-Farnell covers the depiction of food in specific categories of American fiction and explores how the cultural separation that molds food preferences inevitably challenges the existence of a homogenous American identity. The study treads on new grounds since it not only provides the first comprehensive study of food and consumption in contemporary American fiction, but also aims to expose interrelated politics of consumption in a variety of authors from different ethnic, cultural, racial and social backgrounds within the United States.


Food Studies in Latin American Literature

Food Studies in Latin American Literature

Author: Rocío del Aguila

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2021-12-10

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1682261816

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"Collection of essays analyzing a wide array of Latin American narratives through the lens of food studies"--


Are We what We Eat?

Are We what We Eat?

Author: William R. Dalessio

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 9781604978018

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Over the last forty years, scenes that prominently feature acts of preparing and eating food have filled the pages of novels and memoirs written by American immigrants and their descendants because these writers understand that eating is more than a purely biological function but, instead, works to define who we are in the United States and abroad. Are We What We Eat? critically analyzes eight of these pieces of ethnic American literature, which demonstrate the important role that cooking and eating play in the process of identity formation. With the growing scholarly and popular interests in food and ethnicity in the United States, Are We What We Eat? is a timely analysis of food in literature and culture. To date, much of the scholarship on cooking and eating in ethnic American literature has focused on a specific ethnic group, but has not examined, in any in depth way, the similarities among the different ethnic and racial groups that comprise American culture. Are We What We Eat? presents a cross-cultural analysis that considers the common experiences among several ethnic cultures and, at the same time, recognizes the different ways that each culture was (and in some cases, still is) marginalized by the dominant American one. With analysis that is articulate and accessible to most, Are We What We Eat? will be an illuminating study for all who are interested in food, ethnicity, or gender in American culture.


Books That Cook

Books That Cook

Author: Jennifer Cognard-Black

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014-09-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 147983842X

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Organized like a cookbook, Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal is a collection of American literature written on the theme of food: from an invocation to a final toast, from starters to desserts. All food literatures are indebted to the form and purpose of cookbooks, and each section begins with an excerpt from an influential American cookbook, progressing chronologically from the late 1700s through the present day, including such favorites as American Cookery, the Joy of Cooking, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The literary works within each section are an extension of these cookbooks, while the cookbook excerpts in turn become pieces of literature--forms of storytelling and memory-making all their own. Each section offers a delectable assortment of poetry, prose, and essays, and the selections all include at least one tempting recipe to entice readers to cook this book. Including writing from such notables as Maya Angelou, James Beard, Alice B. Toklas, Sherman Alexie, Nora Ephron, M.F.K. Fisher, and Alice Waters, among many others, Books that Cook reveals the range of ways authors incorporate recipes--whether the recipe flavors the story or the story serves to add spice to the recipe. Books that Cook is a collection to serve students and teachers of food studies as well as any epicure who enjoys a good meal alongside a good book.


Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism

Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism

Author: Bryan M. Santin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-03-11

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1108974236

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Bryan M. Santin examines over a half-century of intersection between American fiction and postwar conservatism. He traces the shifting racial politics of movement conservatism to argue that contemporary perceptions of literary form and aesthetic value are intrinsically connected to the rise of the American Right. Instead of casting postwar conservatives as cynical hustlers or ideological fanatics, Santin shows how the long-term rhetorical shift in conservative notions of literary value and prestige reveal an aesthetic antinomy between high culture and low culture. This shift, he argues, registered and mediated the deeper foundational antinomy structuring postwar conservatism itself: the stable social order of traditionalism and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism. Postwar conservatives produced, in effect, an ambivalent double register in the discourse of conservative literary taste that sought to celebrate neo-aristocratic manifestations of cultural capital while condemning newer, more progressive manifestations revolving around racial and ethnic diversity.


Food and Masculinity in Contemporary Autobiographies

Food and Masculinity in Contemporary Autobiographies

Author: Nieves Pascual Soler

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 3319709232

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This book is concerned with food autobiographies written by men from the 1980s to the present. It concentrates on how food has transformed autobiographical narratives and how these define the ways men eat and cook nowadays. After presenting a historical overview of the place of food within men ́s autobiography, this volume analyzes the reasons for our present interest in food and the proliferation of life narratives focused on cooking. Then it centers around the identities that male chefs are taking on in the writing of their lives and the generic models they use: the heroic, the criminal and the hunting autobiographical scripts. This study gives evidence that autobiographies are crucial in the redefinition of the new masculinities emerging in the kitchen. It will appeal to readers interested in Food Studies, Autobiographical Studies, Men's Studies and American Literature and Culture.


A Companion to Multiethnic Literature of the United States

A Companion to Multiethnic Literature of the United States

Author: Gary Totten

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2024-04-01

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 1119652510

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Provides the most comprehensive collection of scholarship on the multiethnic literature of the United States A Companion to the Multiethnic Literature of the United States is the first in-depth reference work dedicated to the histories, genres, themes, cultural contexts, and new directions of American literature by authors of varied ethnic backgrounds. Engaging multiethnic literature as a distinct field of study, this unprecedented volume brings together a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches to offer analyses of African American, Latinx, Native American, Asian American, Jewish American, and Arab American literatures, among others. Chapters written by a diverse panel of leading contributors explore how multi-ethnic texts represent racial, ethnic, and other identities, center the lives and work of the marginalized and oppressed, facilitate empathy with the experiences of others, challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, and other hateful rhetoric, and much more. Informed by recent and leading-edge methodologies within the field, the Companion examines how theoretical approaches to multiethnic literature such as cultural studies, queer studies, ecocriticism, diaspora studies, and posthumanism inform literary scholarship, pedagogy, and curricula in the US and around the world. Explores the national, international, and transnational contexts of US ethnic literature Addresses how technology and digital access to archival materials are impacting the study, reception, and writing of multiethnic literature Discusses how recent developments in critical theory impact the reading and interpretation of multiethnic US literature Highlights significant themes and major critical trends in genres including science fiction, drama and performance, literary nonfiction, and poetry Includes coverage of multiethnic film, history, and culture as well as newer art forms such as graphic narrative and hip-hop Considers various contexts in multiethnic literature such as politics and activism, immigration and migration, and gender and sexuality A Companion to the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States is an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers studying all aspects of the subject


The Vampire in Contemporary Popular Literature

The Vampire in Contemporary Popular Literature

Author: Lorna Piatti-Farnell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-07

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1135053383

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Prominent examples from contemporary vampire literature expose a desire to re-evaluate and re-work the long-standing, folkloristic interpretation of the vampire as the immortal undead. This book explores the "new vampire" as a literary trope, offering a comprehensive critical analysis of vampires in contemporary popular literature and demonstrating how they engage with essential cultural preoccupations, anxieties, and desires. Drawing from cultural materialism, anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary criticism, gender studies, and postmodern thought, Piatti-Farnell re-frames the concept of the vampire in relation to a distinctly twenty-first century brand of Gothic imagination, highlighting important aesthetic, conceptual, and cultural changes that have affected the literary genre in the post-2000 era. She places the contemporary literary vampire within the wider popular culture scope, also building critical connections with issues of fandom and readership. In reworking the formulaic elements of the vampiric tradition — and experimenting with genre-bending techniques — this book shows how authors such as J.R. Ward, Stephanie Meyers, Charlaine Harris, and Anne Rice have allowed vampires to be moulded into enigmatic figures who sustain a vivid conceptual debt to contemporary consumer and popular culture. This book highlights the changes — conceptual, political and aesthetic — that vampires have undergone in the past decade, simultaneously addressing how these changes in "vampire identity" impact on the definition of the Gothic as a whole.


Blood on the Table

Blood on the Table

Author: Jean Anderson

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-04-13

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 147663274X

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Written from a multicultural and interdisciplinary perspective, this collection of new essays explores the semiotics of food in the 20th- and 21st-century crime fiction of authors such as Anthony Bourdain, Arthur Upfield, Sara Paretsky, Andrea Camilleri, Fred Vargas, Ruth Rendell, Stieg Larsson, Leonardo Padura, Georges Simenon, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, and Donna Leon. The collection covers a range of issues, such as the provision of intra-, peri- or paratextual recipes, the aesthetics and ethics of food, eating rituals as indications of cultural belonging, and regional, national and supranational identities. It also tackles eating disorders and other seemingly abnormal habits as signs of "Otherness." Also mentioned are the television productions of the Inspector Montalbano series (1999-ongoing), the Danish-Swedish Bron/Broen (2011, The Bridge), and its remakes The Tunnel (2013, France/UK) and The Bridge (2013, USA).