Category: 2017 Blog Posts

3-5 Secondary Sources:

1. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. Taylor and Francis, 2002.
2. DuCille, Ann. “Phallus(Ies) of Interpretation: Toward Engendering the Black Critical ‘I.’” Callaloo, vol. 16, no. 3, 1993, pp. 559–573. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2932256.
3. Ezell, Margaret. Writing Women’s Literary History. Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
4. Gates, Henry Louis. “’What’s Love Got to Do with It?’: Critical Theory, Integrity, and the Black Idiom.” New Literary History, vol. 18, no. 2, 1987, pp. 345-62. JSTOR, doi: 2307/468733.
5. Hyot, Eric. “On Periodization.” On Literary Worlds.” Oxford UP, 2012.

 

Journal:

Callaloo (An African American Literature and Criticism Journal that focuses more on moderating canon inclusion, see DuCille’s piece above.)

Primary Sources:

1. Fauset, Jessie Redmon. Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral. Beacon, 1990.
2. Huges, Langston and Zora Neale Hurston. Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. Harper Perennial, 1991.
3. Lewis, David Levering, editor. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Penguin, 1994.
4. Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. Negro Universities Press, 1969.
5. Toomer, Jean. Cane. 3^rd, Norton, 2011.

Keywords:

1. Canon Formation
2. Category Definition v. Reality
3. Harlem Renaissance

 

Explanatory Essay:

For this assignment, I met with Professors Harris and Seiler because they have a lot of experience in the era I am fascinated by at this moment and would like to explore. I am interested in canon formation in general and the authors who do not fit the defined characteristics and subjects that have been accepted as that era’s hallmarks. While this can be applied to any time in literary history, the Harlem Renaissance is uniquely interesting for a few reasons. I am interested not only in canon as formulated by elites of the general literary establishment, but also the elites within nontraditional literary movements. Women played a huge role in the Harlem Renaissance movement through working with periodicals, writing, and bringing other artists together to those gatherings a current audience knows were sources of amazing inspiration and the germ for works we study today. The Harlem Renaissance was recent enough to provide a decent record of these women’s contributions, and I want to know how they were simultaneously accepted in the social scene and excluded from the list of names associated with this time’s work. What were their interactions with their male peers, who sometimes served as colleagues at publications? How did so many women get defined by one scandal, such as Larsen’s possible later-career plagiarism, as justification for not acknowledging their work’s quality? What do authors like Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jessie Redmane Fauset’s works say about other issues and themes than we see in black male narratives that traditionally make up the definition for that movement. I am starting here with some theory about canon formation from newer, black critics and more recursive ones. From there, I anticipate reading some of the movement’s own authors’ writing about the politics of the time along with their fictional work and its breadth of subject matter and emotional exploration. I want to explore the way other authors might change our understanding of the period and who was active within it. The formulation of the canon affects the writing of generations who study it, so what effect might a reformulation have on future writers reading and studying this period today?

 

Update:

My blog posts, particularly my examination of Henry Louis Gates’ piece, led me to add Ann DuCille’s article to my Secondary source list. I think that comparing their conflict to that of similarly gender-based racial disagreements of the Harlem Renaissance is interesting. One of my primary texts, Mule Bone is a joint effort by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, and the edition includes essays and letters that show their arguments and tension I think allowed for some of the exclusion of black women’s writing from the initial pattern. It also speaks to the record of women’s deep involvement in the literary elite, which contradicts their initial representation in works remembered from that time. I include Nella Larsen and Jessie Redmon Fauset as two women who are still lagging in notoriety compared to Hurston, but that were similarly integral to the Harlem Renaissance elite. Jean Toomer’s Cane is an extremely woman-centric novel, and Toomer’s groundbreaking formal style and content which was very queer and sexual, was not met with common acceptance at its inception and has grown to prominence today. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader is a great source for shorter works and essays from key Harlem Renaissance figures and those who were overshadowed. I want to explore the themes, tropes, and literary strategies of these fictional works to identify what textual elements suppressed them and what led some to rise later, as well as the case study presented by the relationship between Hurston and Hughes.

Secondary Texts:

 

1. Littleton, C. Scott. “The Comparative Indo-European Mythology of Georges Dumézil”. Journal of the Folklore Institute. Vol 1, No. 3. Dec. 1964, pp.147-166. JSTOR

 

2. Baker, Peter S. Introduction to Old English. Wiley-Blackwell: Feb. 2012. Print.

 

3. Hill, Thomas D. Sources of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies. University of Toronto: 2007.

 

4. Byock, Jesse L. Viking Age Iceland. Penguin UK: Feb. 2001. Print

 

5. Byock, Jesse L. Feud in the Icelandic Saga. UCLA Press: 1982. Print.

 

6. Jakobsson, Armann, and Jakobsson, Sverrir. The Routledge Research Companion to Medieval Icelandic Sagas. Routledge: 2017. Print.

 

 

Journal: Vikings and Medieval Scandinavia. Brepols. http://vms.asnc.cam.ac.uk

 

Keywords: Translation theory, Vikings, Norse, Saga

 

In order to study the primary texts that I will use for my thesis, I need to first be able to read them. Since I cannot begin to decipher ancient Icelandic or Old English, I must be working from translations alone. Professor Skalak pointed out that I need to consider translation theory since I cannot close read the original text. Baker’s Intro to Old English will help me with Beowulf, and I’m going to look in the academic journal for help with the original sagas. Then, I want to break down the sagas and find common tropes or story patterns. Jesse Byock is an expert and a great writer, and I’ve read him before. I’m going to study at least two of Byock’s books. Part of the reason I am so interested by the Nordic gods is because they look nothing like the Judeo-Christian-Muslim monotheistic god, or even the gods and goddesses of the other pagan religions. They are immoral and mortal.  They lie, have sex, fight with each other, and die. So, a question I had to frame my research is a more complex version of “what’s the point?” If the gods and goddesses, weren’t created for a didactic purpose, or to show people that believed in them how to live, what purpose did they serve? What real life application came out of the pantheon? What was the nature of mythology, and how did it form? What about the Christianization of the Scandinavian countries? How did the one religion give way into the other, and what was the effect of this transformation on the mythology, folklore, and legend? Depending on what direction my interest takes, I may also want to study shamanism. I will probably also look at the conceptions of masculinity, since it was such a “macho” society. Finally, I am considering re-watching the series Vikings on HBO for a modern-day recreation of the lives of the Vikings. Both myself and my professor of Nordic Mythology last semester found this series to be astonishingly accurate in its portrayal of the religion and shamanism. Sometimes I can tell which primary source the show-makers are getting their information from. I may study some of the film theory that we have been reading recently to apply this to my thesis.

 

 

Primary Texts:

 

1. Translated by Seamus Heaney. Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9^th ed., vol. A, Norton, 2012. pp. 41-108.

1. The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, translated by Jesse L. Byock. London: Penguin Books, 1998. Print.

3. The Saga of Grettir the Strong, translated by George A. Hight. London: Dent, 1965. Print.
4. The Saga of Erik the Red, translated by J. Sephton, Icelandic Saga Database, Sveinbjorn Thordarson (ed.), URL = <http://www.sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en>
5. Egil’s Saga, translated by W. C. Green, Icelandic Saga Database, Sveinbjorn Thordarson (ed.), URL = <http://www.sagadb.org/egils_saga.en>
6. The Story of Burnt Njal: From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga, translated by George W. Dasent. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1911.

 

 

I am taking a different approach to thesis research than I was planning on. I felt as though my early decision to study Beowulf was starting to limit my scope of texts to read, because I was trying to select texts that I thought Beowulf was most identifiable with. This severely limited my thesis topic, because I was not sure how everything was going to relate and connect to one another. So instead, I decided to consult Dr. Christine Schott, who is professor of English at Erskine College, and who was recommended to me by Professor Skalak. She suggested that I read Grettir’s Saga, and pointed out a relation to Beowulf, which was my original plan. I decided to broaden my scope of research and include sagas that I might previously have overlooked, since they aren’t clearly connected to Beowulf. Instead of starting with a plan and finding books to fit that plan, I want to read a whole range of sagas, particularly fornaldarsaga (legendary sagas), and islendingasogur (family sagas). I am going to start reading these sagas soon, since I have no particular direction or things I am looking for (yet). I want to read the legendary and family stories early on and find patterns, similarities, differences, or things I find otherwise strange, and not think (yet) about their connections to Beowulf. After I read all five sagas, some of which are pretty short, I’ll start planning my argument, or something new that I bring to the scholarly discussion. I think this will broaden my horizons of research, as well as train me to adapt to changes in my writing process.

 

 

(i) Secondary & Theoretical Texts

1. Poets and Prophets of the Resistance: Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador’s Civil War (2017) Joaquín M. Chávez.
   Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago and Jeffrey L. Gould. “Memories of La Matanza: The Political and Cultural Consequences of 1932.” To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932. (2008)
2.  U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance (2017) ed. Karina O Alvarado; Alicia Ivonne Estrada; Ester E. Hernández.
3.  Arias, Arturo. “Central American-Americans: Invisibility, Power and Representation in the US Latino World.” Latino Studies (2003): 1.1.
4. Rodriguez, Ana Patricia “Diasporic Reparations: Repairing the Social Imaginaries of Central America in the Twenty-First Century” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (2013):. 37: 2.3
   Rodriguez, Ana Patricia. “’Departamento 15′: Salvadoran Transnational Migration and Narration.” Dividing the Isthmus: Central American Transnational Histories, Literatures and Cultures. University of Texas Press, 2009
5. Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options.
   Cárdenas, Maritza/ “From Epicentros to Fault Lines: Rewriting Central America from the Diaspora,” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: Vol. 37: Iss. 2, Article 8. 2013.
   (ii) Academic Journal
   Latino Studies. ed. Lourdes Torres. Palgrave Macmillan UK, ISSN: 1476-3435 (Print) 1476-3443 (Online)

(iii) Key terms
Central American Civil Wars, Salvadoran Diaspora, Transnational Migration

(iv) Primary Texts

Primary texts:

1. Javier Zamora, Unaccompanied. Copper Canyon Press, 2017.
2. Alexandra Lytton Regalado, Matria, Black Lawrence Press, 2017.
3. William Archila, The Art of Exile. Bilingual Review Press, 2007.
4. Yesika Salgado, Corazon. Not a Cult Press, 2017.
5. Javier Zamora, Selected Poems: “El Salvador,” “Saguaros,” Poetry Foundation.
6. Yesika Salgado, Selected Poems: “Translation,” “Brown Girl,” “On The Good Days,” YouTube.
7. The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. ed. Leticia Hernández-Linares, Rubén Martínez, and Héctor Tobar. Tia Chucha Press/Northwestern University Press, 2017.
8. Kalina: Theatre Under My Skin, Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry / Teatro bajo mi piel, poesía salvadoreña contemporanea. ed. Alexandra Lytton Regalado. Editorial Kalina, 2014.
9. Manlio Argueta, Un Dia en La Vida. (1980) UCA Editores.

My research process thus far in compiling this list has built upon the following logic: If I am setting out to write a thesis focusing on literature of Salvadoran diaspora, then I cannot do so without also thinking critically about immigration. And if I am to discuss Salvadoran immigration in my thesis, then I cannot do so without centering the 1980’s Civil War as a main cause of influxes of Salvadoran refugees fleeing El Salvador to immigrate to the U.S. Joaquín M. Chavez’s book will provide a more contextual background of both general and specifically literary resistance relating to the events leading up the Salvadoran civil war. Otherwise, the next three sources on my list are texts that provide contextual understandings and summaries of how the twentieth century civil wars in Central America have shaped the Central American diaspora in the United States. I spoke with Professor Vazquez about these sources, with the goal of narrowing down to select texts that will enable me to understand the current critical/scholarly conversation on “Central American-Americans.” I have also specifically selected scholars whose work engages directly with literature or who have otherwise done research or written about Central American literature, both in homeland and diaspora. As I browse through journal issues of Latino Studies I also aim to maintain my focus on what critics are saying about Latino literature as a whole, or aspects/regions that I could study in comparison to Central American/Salvadoran literature.

Ultimately, I want to study the ways in which Salvadoran literature is informed by historical contexts including legacies of colonization and U.S. neoliberal intervention, which is precisely where Mignolo’s writings on decoloniality in Latin America will help provide a more theoretical backing to my work. Further, I want to specifically examine how Salvadoran writers use story as a means of resistance in opposition to wider systemic oppressive frameworks. Some of the questions I am beginning to raise are: How do writers of Salvadoran origin use their literary work to engage with and comment politically on key political events in the twentieth century (specifically, the 1932 uprising and the 1980’s civil war) and their aftermath? How do Salvadoran writers use story as a means of resistance, and what, specifically, do their stories resist? What happens to Salvadoran writing when it moves beyond Salvadoran borders, and what does this writing reveal?

Research update 10/23/17:

The updated changes and additions to my reading list are motivated primarily by my efforts to continuously refine my research topic. As I expand my knowledge on Salvadoran literature, I have been conscious of selecting sources that are as close and specific to the questions I seek to address. I aim to focus on Salvadoran poets writing in the United States and examine the ways in which their writing reflects resistance and/or resilience. As previously mentioned in my original post, in order to do this, I know that my research and analysis needs to maintain a consciousness for the conditions of migration and the related historical contexts. For this reason, I have sought out sources that directly discuss Salvadoran migration and Salvadoran literature in diaspora.

While Joaquín M. Chavez’s book provides a comprehensive analysis of the events and movements that led up to the Salvadoran Civil War, I realized that what I was most interested in was studying the catalyzing event: the 1932 indigenous uprising; so, instead of reading Chavez’s work, I selected a critical article that specifically analyzes the effects of that revolution in regard to the way it is remembered in Salvadoran communities. Rather than trying to understand all the complexities of the twentieth century historical contexts (an impossible task, given my research time frame), I am making efforts to select specific significant events, so as to use my understanding of those events to shape my analysis of their lasting impact. I swapped out one of Ana Patricia Rodriguez’s articles on Central American migration for one that focuses more specifically on Salvadoran migration to the United States. Finally, when I began to read through Walter Mignolo’s book, I realized that although his theoretical framework on decoloniality will be useful, it is not as relevant to the specific questions I am raising regarding diaspora. I intend to keep his work in mind and refer to it if and when applicable, but I opted to swap this source out in order to focus on one that deals more critically with what it means to write from Central American diaspora.

My primary texts feature the poetry collections of four key Salvadoran poets writing in the United States (Zamora, Regalado, Archila and Salgado), as well as a few additional poems from two of them(Zamora and Salgado). I have included two videos of Salgado’s work as a poet and performer in U.S. poetry slam communities. Her performances of her poems add a new layer of analysis, particularly in considering her impact in popularizing Salvadoran narratives via her powerful social media presence. In addition to these works, two other primary texts are anthologies of Central American writing and Salvadoran writing respectively. The only work on my list written by a “homeland” Salvadoran writer is Manlio Argueta’s Un Dia en La Vida and I am most interested in its representation of U.S. intervention in the Salvadoran Civil War.

Secondary or Theoretical Works (3-5)

Danilei, Yael, Nigel S. Rodley and Lars Weisaeth. International Responses to Traumatic Stress. Baywood Publishing, 1996.

During, Simon. Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, 2005.

Pederson, Joshua. “Speak, Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma Theory.” Narrative, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 333-353.

Perez, Rober. “Guantanamo and the Logic of Colonialism: The Deportation of Enemy Indians and Enemy Combatants.” Radical Philosophy Review, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 25-47.

Primary Sources (4-8)

 Brown, Ed. A Soldier’s Fortune and Other Poems: Moving Past PTSD and Creating A Fun-loving Life. Agio Publishing House, 2014.

Falkoff, Mark. Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. University of Iowa Press, 2007.

Lange, Dorothea. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese Internment. W.W. Norton, 2006.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Knopf, 1987.

Morrison, Toni. Home. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.

Okada, John. No-No Boy. Combined Asian American Resource Project, 1976.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Books, 2006.

Academic Journal (1)

 Journal of International Relations and Foreign Policy  

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Far-reaching Keywords/Key terms (1-3)

1. Colonialism
2. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Trauma Theory
3. Prisoner of war literature

Description of Reading List

I started this list with a book that covers a very broad topic, and then narrowed those general topics down as I went further into my research. I located these sources by posing two basic questions to myself: “how did colonialism help to shape a culture of conquest, and therefore, a culture of legal imprisonment that carries into the modern day – specifically from WWII and on?” and “how does literature that comes from prisoners of war differ from literature published by peripheral sources who merely report on war?”.

To answer these questions, I started with a book discussing cultural studies as a theoretical lens that would be applicable to the culture of war, both in the past and present, and how cultures develop based upon the way they engage with other cultures across the world. I wanted to use this blanket term as my theoretical lens so that I can accurately understand the way a culture, both in its contemporary and its past sense, can contribute to the development of war, and how other aspects of culture (media, the public sphere, etc.) contribute to the progression and continuation of war.

From there, I decided to focus on colonialism theory in relation to modern day examples of war and imprisonment to better define the effects of colonialism, and the way colonialism can lead to war, imprisonment, and empires. I chose an article that encompasses this idea of colonialism, while also applying it to Guantanamo Bay to give it a more contemporary edge – and one that starts delving further into my interests with prisoner of war literature. I then chose two articles that deal directly with the responses to trauma and stress – specifically that trauma and stress as it is derived from war and unfair imprisonment. One focuses more on the way literature acts as a point of relief from trauma, which will help to lead into some of my primary sources about prisoner of war poetry and inmate literature. The other focuses on how the world views traumatic stress, and how trauma theory (later coined post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD) are accepted or pushed back on in society.

Updated Reading List Description

 My reading list hasn’t shifting very much in terms of theoretical or secondary works, but I’ve made some definite headway in terms of some primary sources I plan on engaging with to progress my ideas about trauma theory and PTSD. Although I placed a lot of emphasis on colonialism and how it affected the current culture of imprisonment (from WWII and on), I’ve been dealing with a lot of primary texts that deal with reports of trauma, stress and homelessness (as in, a feeling of a lack of a true “home”) to play further into the side of PTSD and the affects of trauma after war, imprisonment, etc. I’ve had some really great conversations with Professor Seiler about the primary texts that would be appropriate to incorporate in my work, and how they can further my understanding of how these traumatic events take action on the minds and self-awareness of victims of trauma.

Both Poems from Guantanamo Bay and A Solider’s Fortune and Other Poems show how literature has helped to aid in the recovery of people experiencing PTSD, while Beloved, Home, No-No Boy and Ceremony explain the aftermath of trauma in someone’s life, in terms of hallucinations, alcoholism, self-destructive behavior, isolation from friends and family, and heightened anxiety. I also added a book (Impounded) that details the lives of the Japanese during the time of internment in the US in hopes of adding another main event in US history to my realm, and to place more emphasis on imprisonment and PTSD as well. Although I’m still adding and deleting things from my primary source list, I feel as though the books I’ve chosen to focus on shed light on some of the main touch-points of trauma theory and PTSD that I want to focus on.

In addition to choosing my primary sources, I also found a new academic journal I plan to work with that is more relevant to the ideas I want to focus on in my research. The articles in this journal focus on the history of colonialism, starting in as early as the 10^th century and into the current times, which aligns perfectly with what I want to focus on in terms of how colonialism spawned the ideas of war and imprisonment, and how those practices have continued on into the modern day.

 

 

Updated: East Asian Literature Through a Feminist Lens

(I) Secondary/ Theoretical Works:

1. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, edited by Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel, 2011.
2. Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature, Edited by Rachael Hutchinson and Leith Morton, 2016
3. The Woman’s Hand: Gender & Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing, by Paul Gordon Schalow, 1997.
4. The Princess, the Witch, and the Fireside: Yanagi Miwa’s Uncanny Restaging of Fairy Tales, by Mayako Murai, 2013.
5. “The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud

 

(II) Academic Journals:

1. The Journal of Japanese Studies
2. AATJ Journal: Japanese Language and Literature

 

(III) Key Words:

1. Gender
2. Japanese/Literature
3. Post-colonial
4. Sexuality
5. Psyche
6. Grotesque

 

(IV) Primary Sources:

1. The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa, 1990 & 1991
2. The Gangster we Are All Looking For, Le Thi Diem Thuy, 2003
3. Revenge, Yoko Ogawa, 1998
4. The House Keeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa, 2003

 

(V) Updated Paragraph:

This updated version of my reading list has omitted some of the sources I previously had. I needed to narrow down my journals and some of my theoretical works, and I stuck with the most relevant ones that include information of Japanese literature and East Asian studies. Although most of my research is centered on Japan, I would also like to branch out to other countries in East Asia such as Vietnam. One of my primary sources, the Gangster We Are All Looking For is written by a Vietnamese female author through the eyes of a young Vietnamese girl who has recently immigrated to the United States. This book centers on her growing up as a young Vietnamese girl and what this means for her in her life as she grows into maturity. My other primary texts are all by the same author whom originally inspired me to pursue this topic, Yoko Ogawa. She is a Japanese writer who has an ability to capture the female protagonist and their desire for romance and the grotesque and uncanny qualities that go along with it. By using multiple books by the same author I hope to find many parallel themes that can help to develop my thesis of the female body and the perception of it through a grotesque lens.

Secondary Works

1. 1. Bentley, Amy. A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age. A Cultural History of Food, vol 6. Gen eds. Fabio Parsecoli and Peter Scholliers. Bloomsbury, 2016.
   2. Bruegel, Martin. A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire. A Cultural History of Food, vol 5. Gen eds. Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers. Bloomsbury, 2016.
   3. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge, 2013. 3^rd Print.
   4. Freedgood, Elaine. “Introduction: Reading Things.” The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning about the Victorian Novel. The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
   5. Grigson, Jane. Food with the Famous. Hollen Street Press, 1979.
   6. Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. Collins, 1986.
   7. David, Elizabeth. Spices, Salts, and Aromatics in the English Kitchen.
   8. Flandrin, Jean-Louis, Massimo Montanari, and Albert Sonnenfeld. Food: A Culinary History. Columbia University Press, 2013. Web. 

Academic Journal

1. Food, Culture, & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. Published quarterly. Routledge. Run by The Association for the Study of Food and Society.

Primary Sources

1. “Artificial Milk.” The Food Journal, v. 3. 1873. J.M. Johnson & Sons. 23-25.
2. Beeton, Mrs. (Isabella Mary). Beeton’s Book of Household Management. 1861. Oxford University Press, 2000.
3. “Domestic Hygeine, No. 3: Drains.” The Food Journal, v. 3. 1873. J.M. Johnson & Sons. 10-12.
4. Eating for Victory: Healthy Home Front Cooking on War Rations. Foreword by Jill Norman. 2007.
5. John Burnett, ed. The Annals of Labour: Autobiographies of British working-class people 1820-1920. Indiana University Press, 1974. Notable sections: Gabriel Tschumi, chef, p. 193-202, and Lilian Westall and Lavinia Swainbank, house-maids, p. 214-226.
6. Lynch, Reah Jeannette. The Win-the-War Cookery Book. St. Louis County Unit, 1918.
7. Powell, Margaret. Below Stairs. St. Martin’s Press, 1968.
8. Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Harper Collins, 1947.
9. Wescott, Alice M. “Pure Food Laws.” The American Journal of Nursing. 13.4. 1913. 274-277.

Keywords and Key Terms

1. “Food culture/society”
2. “_____ British Cookbooks” (insert Victorian, Edwardian, turn of the century, WWI, 1940s/WWII)
3. “Food history”
4. “Gastronomy”
5. “late nineteenth and early twentieth century British food”
6. “Cuisine biography, food accounts”

Description:

I compiled this list based on: two syllabi provided by my aunt, Professor Alison Anrather at Wagner College, who teaches classes on food history and society; stumbling upon books in the food studies section of the library; typing my keywords into Jumpstart; and a conversation with Prof. Su. Because I am not yet sure what portion of the world or segment of history I want to focus on in my thesis – though I am leaning towards Western Europe and perhaps focusing on nineteenth century English food consumption – I intentionally kept my list over-arching and broad. Food: A Culinary History, Food and Culture: A Reader, and A Cultural History of Food will act as sturdy frameworks to contextualize the gradually narrowing scope of my research. Spices, Salts, and Aromatics in the English Kitchen and Food with the Famous will offer more detailed explorations of English-oriented food research and literary traditions of food writing.

Many questions currently frame my inquiry, some academic (in an effort to gear my food hobby towards a researchable topic), and some originating from pure intellectual curiosity. Why has food become the central focus of societies, and why would I argue that it has? What historical events – wars, famines – or traditions signify that cultures operate around the production of food and the social aspect of eating it? What were the food “norms” in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Period, and the past two hundred years, and how do all those varying approaches to or treatments of food illuminate the state of a culture’s economy, commerce, or government? In summary, how does history support the notion that food is a cultural signifier? I realize the scope of history that I am exploring is extremely wide but I am excited to investigate my questions and hopefully emerge with a more detailed, exclusionary (in that it will provide specificity, not a limited perspective) focus for my thesis.

Update:

I am now focusing on mostly British (and some American) food consumption in the late Victorian, Turn of the Century, WWI, and WWII eras. My guiding questions are: How do cookbooks reflect morphing American and British cultural attitudes toward food, as affected by political or economic challenges, national crises, or technological advancements such as the industrial revolution? How does a close reading of these cookbooks expose era-specific anxieties relating to food and resources? I want to examine food as affected by major infrastructural changes, for instance the industrial revolution, WWI, and WWII. Those three moments in history saw a transformation in the way citizens were forced to view food consumption. Though I wish to mainly focus on Britain, because they experienced more dire shortages than America during the world wars and because they are the makers of the Victorian era, I have chosen one American cookbook and novel for lack of British examples.

I have selected two volumes from the Cultural History collection that explore adaptations in nineteenth and twentieth century food attitudes. I added the Freedgood article because Prof. Kersh suggested it to me as an ideology to apply to food in the literature and nonfiction works I am examining; the article focuses on using objects in novels as evidence of cultural anxieties. Shapiro’s book applies directly to my interest in domesticity and home cooking during the Turn of the Century.

Many of the revisions I made to my reading list resulted from wading through primary texts and allowing them to inform the trajectory of my research. I discovered that there were more WWI cookbooks than I could ever study in a thesis, and by exposing myself to 1930s and 1950s materials along with my chosen time periods, I learned that the 1930s and 1950s did not interest me. I am more compelled by infrastructural crises expressed in the home kitchen (i.e. alterations made during the industrial revolution, sanitation and poverty challenges at the Turn of the Century, food shortages during WWI and WWII). The Food Journal provides context for Victorian anxieties over food being discussed in the 1870s, and most of its articles focus on production and sanitation concerns (hence “Artificial Milk” and “Domestic Hygeine No. 3: Drains”). Beeton’s book provides a Victorian example of domestic cooking advice and has been abridged by Oxford University Press, which confers academic value on it – it is not an obscure cookbook existing on the peripheries of the internet, but rather a text already marketed as scholarly. Burnett’s anthology of Turn of the Century autobiographies provides accounts of domestic servants who, though they worked for upper class employers, performed the work and earned the wages of working-class citizens, so their perspectives reflect the home kitchen. The Win-the-War Cookery Book appears to have been printed both in Britain and America, but I can only locate the full American text, so I am using that. I have been unable to find a complete WWII British cookbook and can only locate either anthologized recipe clippings or modernized recipe books marketing themselves as “healthy” rationing books. (There is disturbing misappropriation on the internet of WWII rationing recipes being marketed as weight-loss regimens. Considering that British WWII rationing resulted in serious malnutrition and starvation, I think this appreciation for the scant diet these recipes create is misguided.) I may have to use these clippings as primary sources for WWII. Margaret Powell’s autobiography records her years as a domestic servant from the 1910s-1930s, and Smith’s novel chronicles a working-class Irish immigrant family living in Brooklyn at the Turn of the Century. I selected Smith’s semi-autobiographical novel because much of the family’s poverty is signaled through food consumption and waste and therefore acts as a literary example of my subject.