John T. Edge

Ted Ownby

Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

"This edited collection presents articles in southern food studies by a range of writers, from established scholars like Psyche Williams-Forson to emerging scholars like Rien Fertel. All are chosen for a combination of accessible writing and solid scholarship and offer stories and historical details that add to our understanding of the complexities of southern food and foodways. The editors have chosen to organize the collection by methodology in part in order to escape what reader Belasco calls "the tradition-inventing, nostalgic approach of so many books about regional foodways." They also aim to advance the field by presenting articles that represent a range of tools and methodologies from disciplines such as history, geography, social sciences, American studies, gender studies, literary theory, visual and aural studies, cultural studies and technology studies that make up the amazingly multifaceted world of academic food studies, in hopes that this structure can help further a conversation about best practices"--

Food Studies Methods from the American South

The Larder

Combining the study of food culture with gender studies and using perspectives from historical, literary, environmental, and American studies, Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt examines what southern women's choices about food tell us about race, class, gender, and social power. Shaken by the legacies of Reconstruction and the turmoil of the Jim Crow era, different races and classes came together in the kitchen, often as servants and mistresses but also as people with shared tastes and traditions. Generally focused on elite whites or poor blacks, southern foodways are often portrayed as stable and unchanging--even as an untroubled source of nostalgia. A Mess of Greens offers a different perspective, taking into account industrialization, environmental degradation, and women's increased role in the work force, all of which caused massive economic and social changes. Engelhardt reveals a broad middle of southerners that included poor whites, farm families, and middle- and working-class African Americans, for whom the stakes of what counted as southern food were very high. Five "moments" in the story of southern food--moonshine, biscuits versus cornbread, girls' tomato clubs, pellagra as depicted in mill literature, and cookbooks as means of communication--have been chosen to illuminate the connectedness of food, gender, and place. Incorporating community cookbooks, letters, diaries, and other archival materials, A Mess of Greens shows that choosing to serve cold biscuits instead of hot cornbread could affect a family's reputation for being hygienic, moral, educated, and even godly.

Southern Gender and Southern Food

A Mess of Greens

Combining the study of food culture with gender studies and using per­spectives from historical, literary, environmental, and American studies, Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt examines what southern women's choices about food tell us about race, class, gender, and social power. Shaken by the legacies of Reconstruction and the turmoil of the Jim Crow era, different races and classes came together in the kitchen, often as servants and mistresses but also as people with shared tastes and traditions. Generally focused on elite whites or poor blacks, southern foodways are often portrayed as stable and unchanging—even as an untroubled source of nostalgia. A Mess of Greens offers a different perspective, taking into account industrialization, environmental degradation, and women's increased role in the work force, all of which caused massive economic and social changes. Engelhardt reveals a broad middle of southerners that included poor whites, farm families, and middle- and working-class African Americans, for whom the stakes of what counted as southern food were very high. Five “moments” in the story of southern food—moonshine, biscuits versus cornbread, girls' tomato clubs, pellagra as depicted in mill literature, and cookbooks as means of communication—have been chosen to illuminate the connectedness of food, gender, and place. Incorporating community cookbooks, letters, diaries, and other archival materials, A Mess of Greens shows that choosing to serve cold biscuits instead of hot cornbread could affect a family's reputation for being hygienic, moral, educated, and even godly.

Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

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