Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women's Food Work (Toronto Italian Studies)

__Feeding Fascism__ explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy’s Fascist regime in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. The book looks at women’s experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. __Feeding Fascism__ includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women’s political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations – cooking, feeding, and eating – to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, __Feeding Fascism__ attests to the power of food. Cover Half Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION Tabletop Politics Methodology: Fascism as Magnifying Glass Mapping the Political Landscape Narrative Trajectory Book Overview CHAPTER ONE Towards an Autarkic Italy Birth More Infants, Farm More Food: Women’s (Re)productivity under Fascism Food Production for the National Body Domestic Industry, Architecture, and Design Autarky Elsewhere: Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia CHAPTER TWO Agricultural Labour and the Fight for Taste Speed and Productivity in Rural Propaganda Constructing Consent: From Ricettari to Photocollages Who Were the Mondine? Culinary Protest Songs Foraging and Food Theft From Culinary to Political Resistance Speeding Seasons, Rationalized Rurality, and the Flower of Revolt CHAPTER THREE Raising Children on the Factory Line Taylorist Breastfeeding and the Industrialization of Motherhood Perugina: A Woman-Founded Factory under Fascism The Industrial Biography of Luisa Spagnoli The Perugina Factory I: Rationalized Production The Perugina Factory II: Nurseries and Cafeterias Industrial Artisans: The Paradox of Cottage Industry Entrepreneurism in the Time of Fascism CHAPTER FOUR Recipes for Exceptional Times Merging Home and Home Front Paths to Professionalization for Cookbook Authors Narrating the Food Sanctions How Wartime Privation Shaped Cooking and Taste Translating Domestic Policy into Recipes CHAPTER FIVE Model Fascist Kitchens Rationalist Architecture in the Home Shrinking Kitchens, Expanding Living Rooms Hygiene: The Meaning of Gleam Electric Servants for the Modern Hostess Taylorist Work Triangles in Frankfurt Kitchens Storage Space and the Meaning of Mess Cooking Fire Protests in Public Housing Projects The Problem with Rationalism CONCLUSION From Feeding Fascism to Eating Mussolini Americanization and the Economic Boom Two Shifts: Industrial Food Products, Domestic Workforce Agricultural Labour from Neorealism to Eataly Debates in Italian Food and Politics A Note to Future Researchers Notes Bibliography Index

Feeding Fascism explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy’s Fascist regime in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. The book looks at women’s experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. Feeding Fascism includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women’s political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations – cooking, feeding, and eating – to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, Feeding Fascism attests to the power of food.

"Feeding Fascism explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy's Fascist regime in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. The book looks at women's experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. Feeding Fascism includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women's political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations- cooking, feeding, and eating - to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, Feeding Fascism attests to the power of food."--Page 4 de la couverture "Feeding Fascism explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy's Fascist regime in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. The book looks at women's experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. Feeding Fascism includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women's political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations-- cooking, feeding, and eating--to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, Feeding Fascism attests to the power of food."-- Provided by publisher Feeding Fascism explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy's Fascist regime in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. The book looks at women's experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions.0Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. Feeding Fascism includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women's political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations - cooking, feeding, and eating - to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, Feeding Fascism attests to the power of food Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Womens Food Work examines how women navigated the political challenges to both food production and sexual reproduction under Italys fascist regime. And Garvins research about how they resisted these challenges offers valuable insights into the growing threats to reproductive rights in the United States. Feeding Fascism uses food as a lens to examine how women’s efforts to feed their families became politicized under the Italian dictatorship.