Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics

by Melissa A. Goldthwaite (Editor), Kristin K. Winet (Contribution by), Abby L. Wilkerson (Contribution by), Winona Landis (Contribution by), Alexis M. Baker (Contribution by)

Overview

Inspired by the need for interpretations and critiques of the varied messages surrounding what and how we eat, Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics collects eighteen essays that demonstrate the importance of food and food-related practices as sites of scholarly study, particularly from feminist rhetorical perspectives.

Contributors analyze messages about food and bodies—from what a person watches and reads to where that person shops—taken from sources mundane and literary, personal and cultural. This collection begins with analyses of the historical, cultural, and political implications of cookbooks and recipes; explores definitions of feminist food writing; and ends with a focus on bodies and cultures—both self-representations and representations of others for particular rhetorical purposes. The genres, objects, and practices contributors study are varied—from cookbooks to genre fiction, from blogs to food systems, from product packaging to paintings—but the overall message is the same: food and its associated practices are worthy of scholarly attention.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809335916
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	06/19/2017
Series:	Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Melissa A. Goldthwaite is a professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University. She has published six books, including The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing, seventh edition, and Books That Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal, and numerous articles.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

 Preparation and Ingredients: An Introduction to Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics 
       Melissa A. Goldthwaite

Part I. Purposeful Cooking: Recipes for Historiography, Thrift, and Peace
1. Writing Recipes, Telling Histories: Cookbooks as Feminist Historiography  
  Carrie Helms Tippen
2. The Embodied Rhetoric of Recipes 
  Jennifer Cognard-Black.
3. Understanding the Significance of “Kitchen Thrift” in Prescriptive Texts about Food 
  Jennifer E. Courtney
4. Promoting Peace, Subverting Domesticity: Cookbooks against War, 1968–83
  Abby Dubisar

Part II. Defining Feminist Food Writing
5. The Meaning of a Meal: M. F. K. Fisher and Gastronomical Kairos  
    Erin Branch
6. Feminist Culinary Autobiographies: Batterie de Cuisine to Peaceable Kingdom 
    Lynn Z. Bloom
7. From Street Food to Digital Kitchens: Toward a Feminist Rhetoric of Culinary Tourism (or, How Not to Devour Paris and Eat Your Way     through Asia)    
  Kristin Winet

Part III. Rhetorical Representations of Food-Related Practices
8. Not Your Father’s Family Farm: Toward Transformative Rhetorics of Food and Agriculture      
     Abby Wilkerson
9. Baklava as Home: Exile and Arab Cooking in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Novel Crescent  
     Arlene Voski Avakian
10. Feeling Good and Eating Well: Race, Gender, and Affect in Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meat 
     Winona Landis
11. Sugar and Spice: Cooking with the Girl Poisoner 
     Sylvia A. Pamboukian
12. Boxed Wine Feminisms: The Rhetoric of Women’s Wine Drinking in The Good Wife
       Tammie M. Kennedy

Part IV. Rhetorical Representations of Bodies and Cultures
13. The Commodification of Mexican Women on Mexican Food Packaging    
     Consuelo Carr Salas
14. Feeding the Self: Representations of Nourishment and Female Bodies in Holocaust Art 
      Alexis Baker
15. Evolving Ana: Inviting Recovery   
       Morgan Gresham
 16. Reconstructing the Female Food-Body: Profanity, Purity, and the Bakhtinian Grotesque in Skinny Bitch 
       Rebecca Ingalls
17. Gusto and Grace: Two Fat Ladies and the Rhetorical Construction of a Fat Culinary Ethos
     Sara Hillin
18. Deconstructing the Plus-Size Female Sleuth: Fat Positive Discourse, Rhetorical Excess, and Cultural Constructions of Femininity in Cozy Crime Fiction 
  Elizabeth Lowry

  Contributors  
   
  Index   

 

Editorial Reviews

One leaves Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics with an appreciation of its contributors’ work and how they interpret feminism and analyze communication vis-à-vis food. Like the woman on the cover, face covered in powder, about to bite into a donut, there is a sense of surprise and enjoyment . . . and the potential for indulgence.”—Jennifer O’Connor, Gastronomica

“From discussions of narrative-focused methodologies and food texts as political artifacts, to culinary practices’ influence on definitions of ‘feminist’ lenses then and now, to cooking and consumption behaviors as intentional and tacit contributors to value systems, to the impact of food on sociocultural attitudes toward female physicality, Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics demonstrates how a rhetorical approach uniquely can encompass all things food.”—Adrienne Lamberti, author of Talking the Talk: Revolution in Agricultural Communication

“Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics poses significant questions about the gendered history of cooking; about representations of food across time, cultures, and genres; and about the intimate link between eating and embodiment. The diversity of theoretical approaches and historiographic methodologies ensures readers will find much to feast on in these pages.”—Jane Greer, editor of Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present Moment

“The contributors to this book cogently demonstrate how food—its preparation, history, and representation—is imbued with relations of power: how in some instances it can reinforce limiting gender roles and racial inequality on the one hand but on the other can offer creative possibilities for breaking down social inequalities. This is a must-read for any scholar interested in how food can be transformative.”—Rebecca Dingo, author of Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, Transnational Feminism, and Public Policy Writing

"The authors in this essay collection ask themselves how female voices, frequently silenced in history, can be heard in unprecedented ways if we look at the way they expressed themselves around cooking, eating, and thinking about food. Who tells a story has the power to determine its meaning, and plenty of stories can be told through food. As Goldthwaite states in the introduction to the volume, “messages we receive can shape the way we view, define, and feel about food, ourselves and others."—Fabio Parasecoli, The New School 

"Goldthwaite has written a very promising entree into the contributions of an immense category of women rhetors. Goldthwaite suggests countless novel directions for scholars impatiently awaiting the reclamation of Rhetorica. Major themes of the collection include recipes, feminist food-writing, food-related practices, and bodies and culture...Goldthwaite has offered her readers a very rare dish—joyful scholarship."— A.R. Richards, Kennesaw State University

"The book also serves as an important reminder of how the narrative can be an invaluable source of feminist knowledge and sociopolitical critique. Telling our story can be a powerful and creative way to bear witness and to inform others of who we are and how we live."—Nancy Williams, Hypatia

From the Publisher