Abstract
This chapter reflects on the theory and practice of using interdisciplinary food studies to teach across global spaces on a research-led undergraduate module, as part of a larger programme of decolonising the curriculum. The module, ‘Research Now: Culinary Cultures’, introduces students to multiple theoretical approaches to food narratives and encourages them to make real-life connections to wider key global concerns such as migration, interculturation, transnationalism, globalisation and decoloniality. Inspired by Mexican food studies scholar Meredith E. Abarca’s view that ‘food can function as a medium of understanding existing theories and creating new ones’ (by providing more concrete ways to engage with difficult and sometimes abstract ideas) and animated by her concept of an ‘engaged pedagogy’ based on the ‘critical analysis of food activities [in] food narratives’, it shows how this can be undertaken within a Literature Studies context. This chapter suggests some specific texts, theories and teaching strategies which can be used as part of an ‘engaged pedagogy’ which acts to decolonise the Literature Studies curriculum.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
One example is sugar, the commodity which shaped the modern Caribbean.
- 2.
Meredith. E. Abarca, “Food Consciousness: Teaching Critical Theory Through Food Narratives.” In Food Pedagogies, ed. by Rick Flower and Elaine Swan (London: Routledge, 2015), 215.
- 3.
Heldke, “Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice”, “Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice.” In Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, eds. Deane W. Curtin, Lisa M. Heldke, Indiana U.P., 1992. 214.
- 4.
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994.
- 5.
Abarca, “Food Consciousness,” 216.
- 6.
This section is based on a blog post for the YSJU Literature blog and was jointly authored by Dr Anne-Marie Evans and myself. https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/englishlit/whats-going-on-demystifying-decolonising-the-curriculum/ My thanks to Dr Evans for allowing me to reproduce extracts here in an edited format.
- 7.
Kathy Luckett, Advance HE webinar on Decolonizing the Curriculum, March 2020.
- 8.
Margaret Atwood, Conversations (London: Virago, 1992) 187.
- 9.
Susan Bordo and Leslie Heywood, Unbearable Weight: feminism, Western culture, and the body (Berkeley and London: University of California Press), 102.
- 10.
Caitlin Moran, How to Be A Woman (London: Random House, 2011), 110.
- 11.
Abstract for Sarah Garland, “‘A Cookbook to be read. What about it?’: Alice Toklas, Gertrude Stein and the Language of the Kitchen”, Comparative American Studies 7 (2009): 34–56.
- 12.
School of Oriental and African Studies.
- 13.
- 14.
Decolonising SOAS n.p.
Works Cited
Abarca, Meredith. E. “Food Consciousness: Teaching Critical Theory Through Food Narratives.” In Food Pedagogies, edited by Rick Flower and Elaine Swan, 201–222. London: Routledge, 2015.
Appadurai, Arjun, “How to Make a National Cuisine.” In Food and Culture, second edition, edited by Carole Counihan, and Penny Van Esterik, 289–307. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
Archer, Jayne Elisabeth et al. eds, Food and the Literary Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Ashley, Bob et al., Food and Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
Atwood, Margaret. The Edible Woman. McClelland and Stewart, 1969.
Atwood, Margaret. Conversations. London: Virago, 1992.
Voski Avakian, Arlene, and Barbara Haber eds, From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies. Amherst: U. Massachusetts Press, 2005.
Balirano, Giuseppe, et al. eds, Food Across Cultures: Linguistic Insights in Transcultural Tastes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Roland Barthes, “Steak and Chips.” In Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers. London, Paladin, [1957], 1972.
Belasco, Warren. Food: the key concepts. London: Bloomsbury, 2008.
Bernstein, Basil. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
Beushausen, Wiebke et al. eds, Caribbean Food Cultures: Culinary practices and consumption in the Caribbean and its Diasporas. Germany: Transcript-Verlag, 2014.
Bordo, Susan, and Leslie Heywood, Unbearable weight: feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2003.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard U. Press, 1984.
Brien, Donna Lee, and Lorna Piatti-Farnell eds, The Routledge Companion to Literature and food. London and New York: Routledge, 2018.
Cairns, Kate, and Josee Johnston, Food and Femininity. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Cheng, Julia, “Queering Lists: culinary and literary modernism in The Book of Salt”, MELUS 44, no. 3 (2009): 91–111.
Clarke, Austin. Pigtails and Breadfruit. Toronto: Random House, 1999.
Leo Coleman ed, Food: Ethnographic Encounters. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.
Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik eds, Food and Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2018.
Counihan, The anthropology of food and body: food, meaning and power. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Crowley, Helen, and Susan Himmelweit eds, Knowing Women. London: Polity Press, 1994.
Delderfield, Russell. Male Eating Disorders. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2019.
Douglas, Mary, “How to Decipher a Meal”, Daedalus (Winter 1972): 61–82.
Flowers, Rick, and Elaine Swan eds, Food Pedagogies. London: Routledge, 2015.
Foulston, Jill ed, The Virago Book of Food – The Joy of Eating. London: Virago, 2006.
Garland, Sarah, “‘A Cookbook to be read. What about it?’: Alice Toklas, Gertrude Stein and the Language of the Kitchen”, Comparative American Studies 7 (2009): 34–56.
Garth, Hannah. Food and Identity in the Caribbean. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
hooks, bell. Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Heldke, Lisa, “Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice.” In Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food by Deane W. Curtin, Lisa M. Heldke, Indiana U.P., 1992, 203–29.
Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Sanchez Grant, Sofia, “The Female Body in Lady Oracle and The Edible Woman”, Journal of International Women’s Studies 9, no. 2 (2008): 77–92.
Jackson, Peter, and the CONANX group, Food Words: Essays in Culinary Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Jovanovski, Natalie, Digesting Femininities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Lupton, Deborah. Food, the body and the self. London: Sage, 1996.
Lawson Welsh, Sarah. Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean. London and Washington: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019.
Lawson Welsh, Sarah, “Caribbean Cravings: Food and Literature in the Anglophone Caribbean.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food. London and New York: Routledge, 2018a.
Lawson Welsh, Sarah, “Why Jamie’s Oliver’s Jerk Rice is a Recipe for Disaster”, The Conversation, 2018b. https://theconversation.com/jamie-olivers-jerk-rice-is-a-recipe-for-disaster-heres-why-101879
Lawson Welsh, Sarah, “‘Cooking Up a Storm.’ Performing Cross-cultural culinary discourse: The Case of Levi Roots.” In Caribbean Food Cultures, edited by Wiebke Beushausen et al. Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2014: 153–174.
McWilliams, Ellen, “Margaret Atwood’s Canadian hunger artist: postcolonial appetites in The Edible Woman”, Kunapipi 28, no. 2 (2006): 63–72.
Moran, Caitlin. How to Be a Woman. London: Random House, 2011.
Orbach, Susie. Fat is a Feminist Issue. London: Paddington Press, [1978] 1984.
Orbach, Susie. Susie Orbach on Eating. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002.
Parks, Emma, “You are What you Eat: The Politics of Food in the Novels of Margaret Atwood”, Twentieth Century Literature 43, no.1 (2011): 349–268.
Poetry Society, Poetry on a Plate: A Feast of Poems and Recipes. Cambridge: Salt, 2004.
Posman, Sarah, and Laura Luise Schultz eds, Gertrude Stein in Europe. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past, volume 1. Translated by Scott C K Moncrieff. London, [1913] 1922.
Rowe, Martha. Taste: the infographic book of food. London: Aurum Press, 2015.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Sceats, Sarah. Food, Consumption and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Cambridge: CUP, 2004.
Selvon, Sam. A Brighter Sun. London: Alan Wingate, 1952.
Sen, Sharmila, “Indian Spices across the Black Water.” In From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies, edited by Arlene Voski Avakian and Barbara Haber. Amherst: U. Massachusetts Press, 2005: 185–199.
Shahani, Gitanjali G., Food and Literature. Cambridge: CUP, 2018.
Slater, Nigel., Real Fast Food. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
Toklas, Alice B. Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954.
Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt: A Novel. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Truong, Monique, “Interview with Monique Truong”, Diacritics, 2013.
Watson, James L., and Melissa L. Caldwell, The cultural politics of food and eating: a reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.
Wilk, Richard. Home Cooking in the Global Village. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
Witt, Doris, “From fiction to foodways: Working at the Intersections of African American Literary and Culinary Studies.” In African American foodways, edited by Anne Bower, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007: 101–25.
Xu, Wenying. Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature. University of Hawaii Press, 2008.
Suggested Further Reading
Unit 1: Archer et al. eds (2014), Ashley et al. (2004), Belasco (2008), Lee Brien and Piatti-Farnell eds (2018), Counihan et al. eds (2018), Rowe (2015), Shahani (2018), Watson and. Caldwell eds (2005).
Unit 2: Delderfield (2019), Lupton (1996), Orbach (1984) and (2002), Sceats (2004), Sanchez Grant (2008), McWilliams (2006), Parks (2011), Cairns (2015) and Jovanovski (2018). Posman et al. eds (2017), Shaughnessy (2001), Stein ([1954] 2000) and (1914). Xu (2008) and Cheng (2019), Balirano et al. eds (2019), Counihan and Van Esterik eds (1999), Coleman (2011) and the 2013 Diacritics interview with Monique Truong.
Unit 3: Beushausen et al. eds (2014), Lawson Welsh (2019) and (2018a), Wilk (2006), Balirano et al. eds (2019) and Sen (2005).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lawson Welsh, S. (2022). ‘Culinary Cultures’: Theorising Postcolonial Food Cultures. In: Beyer, C. (eds) Decolonising the Literature Curriculum. Teaching the New English. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91289-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91289-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91288-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91289-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)