The history of home economics covers a wide range of topics and issues, most of which are strikin... more The history of home economics covers a wide range of topics and issues, most of which are strikingly relevant both to everyday lived experience and to other topics studied by historians. Historians of home economics write about rural life, nutrition, interior space, consumer society, education, human development, marriage, gender, social control, and institutional management, among many other subjects. I argue that understanding home economics is a good way to understand much of contemporary mainstream culture as it shapes and is shaped by anything having to do with topics traditionally associated with the home. This article identifies the major works in the field since the 1990s, when scholars outside of home economics began to write the history of the field. It also draws attention to contemporary trends in writing about home economics history and suggests important avenues for research while also acknowledging challenges that scholars in the field face.
local dimensions of their work. The drawing that John Smibert included in The Bermuda Group refer... more local dimensions of their work. The drawing that John Smibert included in The Bermuda Group referencedWestern intellectual traditions that emphasized the association between drawing and ideas, the authority of antiquity, and painting’s status as a liberal art. And the distinctive, relatively narrow aesthetic deployed so successfully by Newport cabinetmakers wed ‘‘Hogarth’s unarchitectonic line of beauty’’ onto ‘‘classic Italianate architectural forms’’ (252). The world that Lovell captures though her object sets disappeared with the American Revolution. Yet for the most part, that political, economic, and cultural upheaval unfolds outside the frame of her vision. We see it only indirectly, refracted through the activism of a Joshua Henshaw, the emigration of a John Singleton Copley, the declining fortunes of the Pepperrells. We see it in the militarized maps of Boston and the destruction of Newport’s vibrant cabinetmaking industry. Indeed, the objects, images, and individuals assembled inArt in a Season of Revolution have little to tell us about the intersection of art and Revolution, much less about the world that emerged after. But in Lovell’s assured hands, this ‘‘object set’’ opens new lines of inquiry about the transatlantic circulation of objects, styles, and people. It offers up a sophisticated analysis of cultural production and reception that departs sharply from tired, reductive references to emulation or influence. Lovell illuminates a particular moment with all of the fluidity, facility, and confidence that we ascribe to Copley’s brush. Learned, inventive, and provocative, Art in a Season of Revolution is a book that will reward close and repeated readings.
Review of: Diners Dudes & Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, Emily J.... more Review of: Diners Dudes & Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, Emily J. H. Contois (2020) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 208 pp., ISBN 978-1-46966-074-5, p/bk, $22.95
Migrant Marketplaces explores how connections between Italian people and foods in Italy, the Unit... more Migrant Marketplaces explores how connections between Italian people and foods in Italy, the United States, and Argentina influenced migrants’ consumer experiences and identities in New York and Buenos Aires during the age of mass migration. The book analyzes discussion about and representations of foodstuffs in the migrant press to characterize New York and Buenos Aires as “migrant marketplaces,” urban spaces defined by transnational linkages between mobile people and goods. As migrant marketplaces, New York and Buenos Aires were global and gendered sites where Italians interacted with foods from their home and host countries in ways that shaped migrants’ consumer identities and practices, the consumer cultures in which they were enmeshed, and wider transatlantic commodity networks. Over the course of the twentieth century, migrant marketplaces feminized, as World War I, tariffs, immigration restriction, and U.S. business interests in Latin America shifted ties between food consump...
Elegant and sweeping in scope, Brian Fagan's Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization is a timely pu... more Elegant and sweeping in scope, Brian Fagan's Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization is a timely publication on an important yet often-overlooked topic. From hominin to 21 st-century Homo sapiens, Fagan details our age-old dependence on seafood-the last and major remaining resource from the wild. As is revealed through dozens of case studies from throughout the world, humble fishing was indispensable to the development of social complexity, the rise of civilizations and the eventual instauration of the modern world. Firmly anchored in current
The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research becaus... more The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research because it spans so many categories of collections over such a long time period and consequently both catches many objects related to food and many interpretations of those objects. Thus, the catalog can be useful both for the study of food and for the meta-study of the subject.<br> This paper explores digital access to the Smithsonian Institution collections as currently configured in 2020. We identify a set of problems without proposing solutions because to do so is beyond our scope. Nonetheless, we hope that the way we frame the problems will help in identifying solutions and improving access to this extraordinary collection, vibrant with objects and meanings. <br> Our primary focus in this paper is the researcher who does approach the catalog with a food project in mind, we want to ensure that we readers recognize the importance of the collection's power to reveal food to t...
Abstract This roundtable discussion examines pedagogical practices in the emerging field of food ... more Abstract This roundtable discussion examines pedagogical practices in the emerging field of food history. Participants shared their experiences in a wide variety of different institutional settings and considered the differences between a food history classroom and more traditional history courses. Topics included how best to teach the history of taste, chronological and temporal scales of analysis, and issues of social justice. Discussants also problematized the epistemological limits of food history with particular focus on the classroom and the best way to provide educational outcomes that serve the future interest of students. Finally, the panel reflected on new directions for teaching food and how to expand individual classes into a larger curriculum.
The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research becaus... more The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research because it spans so many categories of collections over such a long time period and consequently both catches many objects related to food and many interpretations of those objects. Thus, the catalog can be useful both for the study of food and for the meta-study of the subject.<br> This paper explores digital access to the Smithsonian Institution collections as currently configured in 2020. We identify a set of problems without proposing solutions because to do so is beyond our scope. Nonetheless, we hope that the way we frame the problems will help in identifying solutions and improving access to this extraordinary collection, vibrant with objects and meanings. <br> Our primary focus in this paper is the researcher who does approach the catalog with a food project in mind, we want to ensure that we readers recognize the importance of the collection's power to reveal food to t...
The history of home economics covers a wide range of topics and issues, most of which are strikin... more The history of home economics covers a wide range of topics and issues, most of which are strikingly relevant both to everyday lived experience and to other topics studied by historians. Historians of home economics write about rural life, nutrition, interior space, consumer society, education, human development, marriage, gender, social control, and institutional management, among many other subjects. I argue that understanding home economics is a good way to understand much of contemporary mainstream culture as it shapes and is shaped by anything having to do with topics traditionally associated with the home. This article identifies the major works in the field since the 1990s, when scholars outside of home economics began to write the history of the field. It also draws attention to contemporary trends in writing about home economics history and suggests important avenues for research while also acknowledging challenges that scholars in the field face.
local dimensions of their work. The drawing that John Smibert included in The Bermuda Group refer... more local dimensions of their work. The drawing that John Smibert included in The Bermuda Group referencedWestern intellectual traditions that emphasized the association between drawing and ideas, the authority of antiquity, and painting’s status as a liberal art. And the distinctive, relatively narrow aesthetic deployed so successfully by Newport cabinetmakers wed ‘‘Hogarth’s unarchitectonic line of beauty’’ onto ‘‘classic Italianate architectural forms’’ (252). The world that Lovell captures though her object sets disappeared with the American Revolution. Yet for the most part, that political, economic, and cultural upheaval unfolds outside the frame of her vision. We see it only indirectly, refracted through the activism of a Joshua Henshaw, the emigration of a John Singleton Copley, the declining fortunes of the Pepperrells. We see it in the militarized maps of Boston and the destruction of Newport’s vibrant cabinetmaking industry. Indeed, the objects, images, and individuals assembled inArt in a Season of Revolution have little to tell us about the intersection of art and Revolution, much less about the world that emerged after. But in Lovell’s assured hands, this ‘‘object set’’ opens new lines of inquiry about the transatlantic circulation of objects, styles, and people. It offers up a sophisticated analysis of cultural production and reception that departs sharply from tired, reductive references to emulation or influence. Lovell illuminates a particular moment with all of the fluidity, facility, and confidence that we ascribe to Copley’s brush. Learned, inventive, and provocative, Art in a Season of Revolution is a book that will reward close and repeated readings.
Review of: Diners Dudes & Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, Emily J.... more Review of: Diners Dudes & Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, Emily J. H. Contois (2020) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 208 pp., ISBN 978-1-46966-074-5, p/bk, $22.95
Migrant Marketplaces explores how connections between Italian people and foods in Italy, the Unit... more Migrant Marketplaces explores how connections between Italian people and foods in Italy, the United States, and Argentina influenced migrants’ consumer experiences and identities in New York and Buenos Aires during the age of mass migration. The book analyzes discussion about and representations of foodstuffs in the migrant press to characterize New York and Buenos Aires as “migrant marketplaces,” urban spaces defined by transnational linkages between mobile people and goods. As migrant marketplaces, New York and Buenos Aires were global and gendered sites where Italians interacted with foods from their home and host countries in ways that shaped migrants’ consumer identities and practices, the consumer cultures in which they were enmeshed, and wider transatlantic commodity networks. Over the course of the twentieth century, migrant marketplaces feminized, as World War I, tariffs, immigration restriction, and U.S. business interests in Latin America shifted ties between food consump...
Elegant and sweeping in scope, Brian Fagan's Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization is a timely pu... more Elegant and sweeping in scope, Brian Fagan's Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization is a timely publication on an important yet often-overlooked topic. From hominin to 21 st-century Homo sapiens, Fagan details our age-old dependence on seafood-the last and major remaining resource from the wild. As is revealed through dozens of case studies from throughout the world, humble fishing was indispensable to the development of social complexity, the rise of civilizations and the eventual instauration of the modern world. Firmly anchored in current
The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research becaus... more The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research because it spans so many categories of collections over such a long time period and consequently both catches many objects related to food and many interpretations of those objects. Thus, the catalog can be useful both for the study of food and for the meta-study of the subject.<br> This paper explores digital access to the Smithsonian Institution collections as currently configured in 2020. We identify a set of problems without proposing solutions because to do so is beyond our scope. Nonetheless, we hope that the way we frame the problems will help in identifying solutions and improving access to this extraordinary collection, vibrant with objects and meanings. <br> Our primary focus in this paper is the researcher who does approach the catalog with a food project in mind, we want to ensure that we readers recognize the importance of the collection's power to reveal food to t...
Abstract This roundtable discussion examines pedagogical practices in the emerging field of food ... more Abstract This roundtable discussion examines pedagogical practices in the emerging field of food history. Participants shared their experiences in a wide variety of different institutional settings and considered the differences between a food history classroom and more traditional history courses. Topics included how best to teach the history of taste, chronological and temporal scales of analysis, and issues of social justice. Discussants also problematized the epistemological limits of food history with particular focus on the classroom and the best way to provide educational outcomes that serve the future interest of students. Finally, the panel reflected on new directions for teaching food and how to expand individual classes into a larger curriculum.
The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research becaus... more The Smithsonian Institution collection is particularly important for food studies research because it spans so many categories of collections over such a long time period and consequently both catches many objects related to food and many interpretations of those objects. Thus, the catalog can be useful both for the study of food and for the meta-study of the subject.<br> This paper explores digital access to the Smithsonian Institution collections as currently configured in 2020. We identify a set of problems without proposing solutions because to do so is beyond our scope. Nonetheless, we hope that the way we frame the problems will help in identifying solutions and improving access to this extraordinary collection, vibrant with objects and meanings. <br> Our primary focus in this paper is the researcher who does approach the catalog with a food project in mind, we want to ensure that we readers recognize the importance of the collection's power to reveal food to t...
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