Literature and Food Studies

Literature and Food Studies provides a comparative literary history of the politics of food from the early modern through to the contemporary periods. The book explores how literature has contributed to discourses around pastoralism, agribusiness, taste, foodways, food security and food justice and how these feed back into literature. Tracing their literary enquiries through colonialism, industrialization and globalization, the authors explore primary materials as diverse as John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, Hannah Wooley’s seventeenth-century "receipt books" and Vandana Shiba’s recent polemics on genetically modified food. Literature and Food Studies foregrounds questions of globalism, place, cross-cultural exchange, identity, and empire as they shape and are shaped by food discourses

Combining a cultural studies approach to food and agriculture with textual analysis and historical contextualisation, Literature and Food Studies is a clear and engaging introduction to this rapidly expanding topic.

Allison Carruth is Associate Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University and is also an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oregon.

Amy L. Tigner is Assistant Professor of Renaissance Studies in the English Department at the University of Texas, Arlington.