Consumption and the Literary Cookbook

Consumption and the Literary Cookbook offers readers the first book-length study of literary cookbooks. Imagining the genre more broadly to include narratives laden with recipes, cookbooks based on cultural productions including films, plays, and television series, and cookbooks that reflected and/or shaped cultural and historical narratives, the contributors draw on the tools of literary and cultural studies to closely read a diverse corpus of cookbooks. By focusing on themes of consumption―gastronomical and rhetorical―the sixteen chapters utilize the recipes and the narratives surrounding them as lenses to study identity, society, history, and culture. The chapters in this book reflect the current popularity of foodie culture as they offer entertaining analyses of cookbooks, the stories they tell, and the stories told about them.

Roxanne Harde is Professor of English at the University of Alberta's Augustana Faculty, where she also serves as Associate Dean, Research. A Fulbright Scholar, Roxanne researches and teaches American literature and culture, focusing on children’s literature and popular culture. Her most recent book is The Embodied Child, co-edited with Lydia Kokkola (Routledge, 2017).

Janet Wesselius is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta. In addition to her work in feminist epistemology, she has published on philosophy and children’s literature, American Pragmatism and Pollyanna, and Descartes and Anne of Green Gables.