Literary Food Studies Scholar
A specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century food writing, my research explores the relationship between eating and language as well as cultural attitudes toward the body and its hungers.
To date, my research has taken form in two books: Aesthetic Pleasure in Twentieth-Century Women's Food Writing: The Innovative Appetites of M. F. K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas, and Elizabeth David (Routledge, 2012, paperback forthcoming May 2013) and Cooking in America, 1840-1945 (Greenwood, 2006). Aesthetic Pleasure
traces the rise of gastronomy within women’s food writing, a trend that enabled select authors to pioneer forms of self-expression that celebrate female appetite for pleasure and for gastronomic adventure. Cooking in America details the recipes, cooking techniques, and technology that shaped the American palate from 1840-1945.
In addition to researching and writing books on food culture and food literature, I have also created and taught a range of food studies seminars. Course themes include culinary voyages; food, language, and the imagination; revolutionary movements in the edible arts; ravenous landscapes and edible characters in children’s literature; and hunger artists. I am currently at work on my second book for Greenwood Press, Asian American Food Culture.
To date, my research has taken form in two books: Aesthetic Pleasure in Twentieth-Century Women's Food Writing: The Innovative Appetites of M. F. K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas, and Elizabeth David (Routledge, 2012, paperback forthcoming May 2013) and Cooking in America, 1840-1945 (Greenwood, 2006). Aesthetic Pleasure
traces the rise of gastronomy within women’s food writing, a trend that enabled select authors to pioneer forms of self-expression that celebrate female appetite for pleasure and for gastronomic adventure. Cooking in America details the recipes, cooking techniques, and technology that shaped the American palate from 1840-1945.
In addition to researching and writing books on food culture and food literature, I have also created and taught a range of food studies seminars. Course themes include culinary voyages; food, language, and the imagination; revolutionary movements in the edible arts; ravenous landscapes and edible characters in children’s literature; and hunger artists. I am currently at work on my second book for Greenwood Press, Asian American Food Culture.