Modernism and food studies : politics, aesthetics, and the avant-garde

Transnational in scope, this much-needed volume explores how modernist writers and artists address and critique the dramatic changes to food systems that took place in the early twentieth century. During this period, small farms were being replaced with industrial agriculture, political upheavals exacerbated food scarcity in many countries, and globalization opened up new modes of distributing culinary commodities. Looking at a unique variety of art forms by authors, painters, filmmakers, and chefs from Ireland, Italy, France, the United States, India, the former Soviet Union, and New Zealand, contributors draw attention to modernist representations of food, from production to distribution and consumption. They consider Oscar Wildes aestheticization of food, Katherine Mansfields use of eggs as a feminist symbol, Langston Hughess use of chocolate as a redemptive metaphor for blackness, hospitality in William Faulkners Sanctuary , Ernest Hemingways struggles with gender and sexuality as expressed through food and culinary objects, Futurist cuisine, avant-garde cookbooks, and the impact of national famines on the work of James Joyce, Viktor Shklovsky, and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. Less celebrated topics of putrefaction and waste are analyzed in discussions of food as both a technology of control and a tool for resistance. The diverse themes and methodologies assembled here underscore the importance of food studies not only for the literary and visual arts but also for social transformation. The cultural work around food, the editors argue, determines what is produced, who has access to it, and what can or will change. A milestone volume, this collection uncovers new links between seemingly disparate spaces, cultures, and artistic media and demystifies the connection between modernist aesthetics and the emerging food cultures of a globalizing world. Giles Whiteley | Aimee Gasston | Randall Wilhelm | Bradford Taylor | Sean Mark | Cline Mansanti | Shannon Finck Giles Whiteley | Aimee Gasston | Randall Wilhelm | Bradford Taylor | Sean Mark | Cline Mansanti | Shannon Finck | Matthew Hayward | David A. Davis | Philip Keel Geheber | Chrissie Van Mierlo | Graig Uhlin | Asiya Bulatova | Jessica Martell | Brooke Stanley | Carrie Helms Tippen | Adam Fajardo Transnational in scope, this much-needed volume explores how modernist writers and artists address and critique the dramatic changes to food systems that took place in the early twentieth century. During this period, small farms were being replaced with industrial agriculture, political upheavals exacerbated food scarcity in many countries, and globalization opened up new modes of distributing culinary commodities. Looking at a unique variety of art forms by authors, painters, filmmakers, and chefs from Ireland, Italy, France, the United States, India, the former Soviet Union, and New Zealand, contributors draw attention to modernist representations of food, from production to distribution and consumption. They consider Oscar Wilde's aestheticization of food, Katherine Mansfield's use of eggs as a feminist symbol, Langston Hughes's use of chocolate as a redemptive metaphor for blackness, hospitality in William Faulkner's Sanctuary , Ernest Hemingway's struggles with gender and sexuality as expressed through food and culinary objects, Futurist cuisine, avant-garde cookbooks, and the impact of national famines on the work of James Joyce, Viktor Shklovsky, and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. Less celebrated topics of putrefaction and waste are analyzed in discussions of food as both a technology of control and a tool for resistance. The diverse themes and methodologies assembled here underscore the importance of food studies not only for the literary and visual arts but also for social transformation. The cultural work around food, the editors argue, determines what is produced, who has access to it, and what can or will change. A milestone volume, this collection uncovers new links between seemingly disparate spaces, cultures, and artistic media and demystifies the connection between modernist aesthetics and the emerging food cultures of a globalizing world. Contributors: Giles Whiteley | Aimee Gasston | Randall Wilhelm | Bradford Taylor | Sean Mark | Céline Mansanti | Shannon Finck Cover MODERNISM AND FOOD STUDIES Title Copyright CONTENTS List of Figures Introduction Section I. Aesthetics and the Body 1. A Swine from Epicurus’s Herd: The Culinary, Aesthetic, and Erotic in Wilde and Huysmans 2. “Like the Conjuror Produces the Egg”: Katherine Mansfield’s Feminist Aesthetics 3. Tasteful Insights: Food, Desire, and the Visual in Hemingway’s Literary Still Lifes 4. Modernist Taste: Ford Madox Ford, Queer Potatoes, and Goodly Apples Section II. Cookbooks 5. “Recipes for the Kitchens of the Future”: The Futurist Art of Feeding 6. Assimilating the Avant-Garde: Futurist Cuisine in U.S. Local Newspapers, 1913–1933 7. Alimentary Assurances: Possessive Attachment and Edible Aspirations in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book Section III. Globalization, Nationalism, and the Politics of Provenance 8. Invalid Port: The Politics of Consumption in James Joyce’s Ulysses 9. Modernism, Primitivism, and Food in James Agee’s Cotton Tenants 10. The Encyclopedic Culinary Nationalism of Marcel Rouff’s The Passionate Epicure 11. Joyce’s Trade Wars: The Politics of Provenance in Finnegans Wake Section IV. Rationing, Resistance, and Revolt 12. The Raw and the Rotten: Food and Revolt in Early Modernist Film 13. Food for Thought and Scientific Food Rationing: Viktor Shklovsky’s Case against Censorship 14. Potatoes and the Political Ecology of James Joyce’s Dubliners 15. Paddy, Mangoes, and Molasses Scum: Food Regimes and the Modernist Novel in The Tale of Hansuli Turn Section V. Imagination and Exchange 16. “A New Confederacy”: The Economy of Southern Hospitality in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary 17. Here There Will Be No Unhappiness: Chocolate and Langston Hughes’s Utopian Impulse List of Contributors Index As the first book-length study to bring the fields of modernism and food studies together, Modernism and Food Studies anchors the burgeoning field of modernist food studies. This volume collects theoretically and methodologically diverse essays that investigate modernist representations of food, broadly treated in phases from production to distribution and consumption. By exploring the profound relationship between modernist aesthetics and the new food cultures of modernity, Modernism and Food Studies uncovers new links between seemingly disparate spaces, cultures, and artistic media in a globalizing world