The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South

by Andrew Warnes (Contribution by), Angela Jill Cooley (Contribution by), Beth Latshaw (Contribution by), Carolyn de la Peña (Contribution by), David S. Shields (Contribution by)

Overview

The sixteen essays in The Larder argue that the study of food does not simply help us understand more about what we eat and the foodways we embrace. The methods and strategies herein help scholars use food and foodways as lenses to examine human experience. The resulting conversations provoke a deeper understanding of our overlapping, historically situated, and evolving cultures and societies.

The Larder presents some of the most influential scholars in the discipline today, from established authorities such as Psyche Williams-Forson to emerging thinkers such as Rien T. Fertel, writing on subjects as varied as hunting, farming, and marketing, as well as examining restaurants, iconic dishes, and cookbooks.

Editors John T. Edge, Elizabeth Engelhardt, and Ted Ownby bring together essays that demonstrate that food studies scholarship, as practiced in the American South, sets methodological standards for the discipline. The essayists ask questions about gender, race, and ethnicity as they explore issues of identity and authenticity. And they offer new ways to think about material culture, technology, and the business of food.

The Larder is not driven by nostalgia. Reading such a collection of essays may not encourage food metaphors. “It’s not a feast, not a gumbo, certainly not a home-cooked meal,” Ted Ownby argues in his closing essay. Instead, it’s a healthy step in the right direction, taken by the leading scholars in the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820346526
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	10/15/2013
Series:	Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place Series , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

John T. Edge (Editor)
JOHN T. EDGE is the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the foodways volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt (Editor)
ELIZABETH S. D. ENGELHARDT is a professor of American studies and women’s and gender studies at the University of Texas, Austin and is the chair of the Department of American Studies. She is the author of A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food (Georgia) and The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature.

Ted Ownby (Editor)
TED OWNBY is a professor of history and southern studies at the University of Mississippi and is the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. He is the author of American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830–1998 and Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865–1920.

Sara Camp Milam (Editor)
SARA CAMP MILAM is the Southern Foodways Alliance’s managing editor. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.


ANDREW WARNES is Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at Leeds University. He is the author of Hunger Overcome? (Georgia) and Richard Wright's Native Son.
ANGELA JILL COOLEY is an assistant professor of history at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has a PhD from the University of Alabama and a JD from the George Washington University Law School.
JUSTIN A. NYSTROM is an associate professor of history at Loyola University in New Orleans and director of the Center for the Study of New Orleans. He is the author of New Orleans after the Civil War: Race, Politics, and a New Birth of Freedom and the director of the documentary film This Haus of Memories.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Redrawing the Grocery: Practices and Methods for Studying Southern Food Elizabeth Engelhardt 1

Part 1 Cookbooks and Ingredients 7

Chapter 1 "Everybody Seemed Willing to Help": The Picayune Creole Cook Book as Battleground, 1900-2008 Rien T. Fertel 10

Chapter 2 The Women of St. Paul's Episcopal Church Were Worried: Transforming Domestic Skills into Saleable Commodities in Texas Rebecca Sharpless 32

Chapter 3 Prospecting for Oil David S. Shields 57

Chapter 4 Bodies of the Dead: The Wild in Southern Foodways Wiley C. Prewitt Jr. 76

Part 2 People and Communities 95

Chapter 5 The Soul of the South: Race, Food, and Identity in the American South Beth A. Latshaw 99

Chapter 6 Italian New Orleans and the Business of Food in the Immigrant City: There's More to the Muffuletta than Meets the Eye Justin A. Nystrom 128

Chapter 7 Mother Corn and the Dixie Pig: Native Food in the Native South Rayna Green 155

Chapter 8 A Salad Bowl City: The Food Geography of Charlotte, North Carolina Tom Hanchett 166

Part 3 Spaces and Technologies 185

Chapter 9 Eating Technology at Krispy Kreme Carolyn de la Peña 188

Chapter 10 "Americas Place for Inclusion": Stories of Food, Labor, and Equality at the Waffle House Katie Rawson 216

Chapter 11 "The Customer Is Always White": Food, Race, and Contested Eating Space in the South Angela Jill Cooley 240

Part 4 Material Cultures 273

Chapter 12 The "Stuff" of Southern Food: Food and Material Culture in the American South Marcie Cohen Ferris 276

Chapter 13 The Dance of Culinary Patriotism: Material Culture and the Performance of Race with Southern Food Psyche Williams-Forson 312

Chapter 14 "I'm Talkin' 'Bout the Food I Sells": African American Street Vendors and the Sound of Food from Noise to Nostalgia Jessica B. Harris 333

Part 5 On Authenticity 343

Chapter 15 Edgeland Terroir: Authenticity and Invention in New Southern Foodways Strategy Andrew Warnes 345

Chapter 16 Conclusion: Go Forth with Method Ted Ownby 363

Contributors 371

Index 375

Editorial Reviews

There exist collections of scholarship in food studies, of scholarship in southern studies in general, and of scholarship in southern food in particular, but no food studies collection I know of focuses mainly on methods. This is new and worthy of publication.

editor of A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age - Amy Bentley

Edge, Engelhardt, Ownby, and their contributors touch on issues familiar in southern studies—especially the roles of race, class, and gender—and do so in an exceptionally fresh and tangible way, through food. This is one of the best collections of food scholarship.

visiting professor of gastronomy at Boston University and author of Food: The Key Concepts - Warren Belasco

“Edge, Engelhardt, Ownby, and their contributors touch on issues familiar in southern studies—especially the roles of race, class, and gender—and do so in an exceptionally fresh and tangible way, through food. This is one of the best collections of food scholarship.”—Warren Belasco, visiting professor of gastronomy at Boston University and author of Food: The Key Concepts

“There exist collections of scholarship in food studies, of scholarship in southern studies in general, and of scholarship in southern food in particular, but no food studies collection I know of focuses mainly on methods. This is new and worthy of publication.”—Amy Bentley, editor of A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age

“Readers with cookbook collections will find this encyclopedia volume useful in learning about the ethnic, economic, social, and racial components of what they eat. The three editors have gone a long way in addressing the real complexities that exist—far beyond Mother Corn and the Dixie pig.” —Choice

"[The Larder] is dedicated to setting the historical record straight and to probing the illusions propagated by Southern food evangelists." —Jennifer Jensen Wallach, The Times Literary Supplement

“The Larder brings together some of the most recognized names in Southern food studies into a collection of essays that is bound to become required reading for any student of Southern culture. . . . The Larder is a text for any scholar turning to food ways for a new perspective on familiar subjects. The bibliographies and interstitial literature reviews are especially useful for new food scholars; they are packed tightly with essential reading in the field. The book can be mined for content . . . However, The Larder can also be mined for method, whether one is writing about New England clam chowder or California taco stands.” —Carrie Helms Tippen, Journal of American Culture

“The expansion of the food studies movement—and we can confidently call it that—is due, in part, to the groundbreaking works on southern foodways by the editors John T. Edge, Elizabeth Engelhardt, and Ted Ownby. [T]he editors state their intention to focus on methods—how to study food, how to use the processes that have emerged in food studies. . . . [The Larder is] the first food studies work to raise the crucial topic of methodology, and it charts a promising trajectory for the field. If similar works follow, the future of food studies is limitless.”—Andrew F. Smith, The Journal of American History

“What in our past and present foodways do we value? To what mix of old and new, custom and change, ritual and improvisation, should we aspire? . . . The Larder as a whole is a valuable manifestation of just such moral questioning.”—Doris Witt, The Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher