In this course, students will be asked to consider how cookbooks as material and cultural texts, as well as economic goods, have been used for activism—from 19th century community cookbooks for feminism to DIY cookzines for social justice. Although, as Kennan Ferguson has noted, cookbooks ”do not seem political because the demands they make upon us do not seem to be ones concerned with power or authority,” cookbooks in fact have a long history of being used to rhetorically, affectively, materially and economically support political and activist causes.
Students will be expected to actively engage in weekly course discussions, as well as draw their own conclusion on the role of (cook)books in society through independent research.
- Lehrende/r: Ellen Barth
Semester: WT 2023/24