Conversations With Food offers readers an array of essays revealing the
power of food (and its absence) to transform relationships between the
human and non-human realms; to define national, colonial, and
postcolonial cultures; to help instantiate race, gender, and class
relations; and to serve as the basis for policymaking. Food functions in
these contexts as items in religious or secular law, as objects with
which to bargain or over which to fight, as literary trope, and as a way
to improve or harm health--individual or collective. The anthology
ranges from Ancient Greece to the posthuman fairy underworld; from the
codifying of French culinary heritage to the strategic marketing of
100-calorie snacks; from the European famine after the Second World War
to the lush and exotic cuisines of culinary tourism today. Conversations
With Food will engage anyone interested in discovering the disciplinary
breadth and depth of food studies. The anthology is ideally suited for
introductory and advanced courses in food studies, as it includes essays
in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, and each author
draws cross-disciplinary linkages between their own work and other
essays in the volume. This thematic and conceptual intercalation, when
read with the editors' introduction, makes the collection an
exceptionally strong representation of the field of food studies.
