About the Book
How do we engage with food through memory and imagination? This expansive volume spans time and space to illustrate how, through food, people have engaged with the past, the future, and their alternative presents.
Beth M. Forrest and Greg de St. Maurice have brought together first-class contributions, from both established and up-and-coming scholars, to consider how imagination and memory intertwine and sometimes diverge. Chapters draw on cases around the world-including Iran, Italy, Japan, Kenya, and the US-and include topics such as national identity, food insecurity, and the phenomenon of knowledge. Contributions represent a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. This volume is a veritable feast for the contemporary food studies scholar.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Body and Individual
1. A Private Snack of Crackers and Butter, Lisa Heldke, Gustavus Adolphus, USA
2. Fermentation and Delicious / Disgusting Narratives, Maya Hey, Concordia University, Canada
3. How Does Memory Impact Food Choice and Preference? The Role of Implicit and Imperfect Processes in Research on Food Attitudes, Leighann Chaffee, University of Washington Tacoma, USA
4. Food Memoirs and Coming-of-Age Stories: Memory and Maternal Kitchens in Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter, Julieta Flores Jurado, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
5. What Role Does Memory Play in Our Enjoyment of Meals?, Charles Spence, University of Oxford, UK
Part II: Family and Community
6. Brittle Memories: Sharing Culinary Expertise in an Italian Family, Fabio Parasecoli, New York University, USA
7. Menus of the Zodiac Club of New York, 1868-1915, Paul Freedman, Yale University, USA; Graham Harding, Oxford University; Henry Voigt, Menu Collector
8. Food Memory and Food Imagination at Auschwitz, Lisa Pine, London South Bank University, UK
9. The Knife Without a Hand: Ethnographic Memoir Through a Goat not Eaten, Samburu, Northern Kenya, John Holtzman, Western Michigan University
Part III: Cities
10. The Legend of Les Mères Lyonnaises: Narrative, Meaning and Gender in the Kitchen, Rachel Black, Connecticut College, USA
11. Memories, Meals, and Shame in Florence, Italy, Carole Counihan, Millersville University, USA
Part IV: Regional
12. The Little Orange: The Multiple Making of Place through an Iconic Sicilian Food, Amanda Hilton, University of Arizona, USA
13. Memories and Meaningfulness of Apples in the Midwestern Imagination, Lucy Long, Bowling Green State University, USA
14. Reverse Engineering Terroir: Creating Grounds for Identity, Thomas Parker, Vassar College, USA
Part V: National
15. The Local and the National in Japan's Documentary Food Show Kuishinbo! Banzai, Greg de St. Maurice, Keio University, Japan
16. Food, Rituals, and the Selective Remembrance of (an Idealized) Home in Diaspora: Iranians of New Zealand, Amir Sayadabdi, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
17. The Taste of Earth and Homeland: Remembering Palestine in “Little Ramallah”, Jennifer Shutek, New York University, USA
18. Tasting History: Eating Biscuits and Imagining National Identity, Lindsay Kelley, University of New South Wales, Australia
Part VI: Cross-Regional
19. The Next Apicius, Andrew Donnelly, Loyola University Chicago, USA
20. Remembering and Promoting Grandma's Cooking through the Mediterranean Diet, Apulia, Southern Italy, Elisa Ascione, The Umbra Institute, Italy; Vincenza Gianfredi, University of Perugia, Italy; and Daniele Nucci, Veneto Institute of Oncology, Italy
21. The Pharmacological Table: Environmental Memory in New Nordic Cuisine, C. Parker Krieg, University of Helsinki, Finland
22. Re-membering Value and Excess: Food Disposal, Recovery, Identities and Imagining in the US and Italy, Leda Cooks, University of Massachusetts, USA
Part VII: Beyond National and Regional Boundaries
23. Sweet Disturbances: Candy as Speculative Imagination for a Socially Grounded Memory, Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz, University of the Basque Country, Spain
24. Eating in the Time of the Dead: Farming, Foraging, and Food Insecurity in Zombie Cinema, Taylor Reid, Culinary Institute of America, and Maureen Costura, Culinary Institute of America
25. Cooked in Milk and Full of Froyo: Food and Eating in Hell in the American Imagination, Beth Forrest, Culinary Institute of America, USA
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Beth M. Forrest is Professor of Liberal Arts at the Culinary Institute of America, USA and President of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.
Greg de St. Maurice is Assistant Professor at Keio University, Japan and Vice President of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.
Review :
This volume is a rare treat, bringing together leading scholars and new voices from around the world to explore how food evokes pasts and futures, from the most intimate and personal to the most encompassing identities. It will become a standard reference in the field for the foreseeable future.
This is an important contribution to the field of social and cultural studies on taste. In 25 chapters, we find out how memory and imagination entwine to establish our experience of time, space, and place, from crackers to arancino/a and apples, domestic to professional kitchens, and routine commensality to special celebrations.
This book is a perfect teaching tool for studying food, memory, and imagination. It makes the productive and refreshing argument that memory and heritage can be unstable while imagination can be real.
