The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture

(Hardback)

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The influence of food has grown rapidly as it has become more and more intertwined with popular culture in recent decades. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture offers an authoritative, comprehensive overview of and introduction to this growing field of research. Bringing together over 20 original essays from leading experts, including Amy Bentley, Deborah Lupton, Fabio Parasecoli, and Isabelle de Solier, its impressive breadth and depth serves to define the field of food and popular culture. Divided into four parts, the book covers: - Media and Communication; including film, television, print media, the Internet, and emerging media - Material Cultures of Eating; including eating across the lifespan, home cooking, food retail, restaurants, and street food - Aesthetics of Food; including urban landscapes, museums, visual and performance arts - Socio-Political Considerations; including popular discourses around food science, waste, nutrition, ethical eating, and food advocacy Each chapter outlines key theories and existing areas of research whilst providing historical context and considering possible future developments. The Editors' Introduction by Kathleen LeBesco and Peter Naccarato, ensures cohesion and accessibility throughout. A truly interdisciplinary, ground-breaking resource, this book makes an invaluable contribution to the study of food and popular culture. It will be an essential reference work for students, researchers and scholars in food studies, film and media studies, communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, and American studies.

Reviews

Food is everywhere in popular culture, and this is an exemplary collection that helps us study that phenomenon critically as the product of subordinated peoples that nevertheless might serve the interest of the dominant classes. This handbook provides refreshing new tools, concepts and instances of that dialectic. It is exceptional in providing breadth and depth in comparative global perspective. * Krishnendu Ray, New York University, USA *
The editors of this volume could not have done better in bringing together such a luminary cast of influential scholars on the topic. This exciting collection is essential reading for anyone interested in two of lifes fundamental pursuits: food, and how we frame what we put in our bodies. * Signe Rousseau, University of Cape Town, South Africa *
Given the prominence of food in popular discourse of recent decades, this solid collection is a welcome addition to the food studies literature. A remarkable cast of contributors offers concise discussions of topics including traditional and emerging media, restaurants, street food and home cooking, patterns of consumption across age, gender, class and race, to food issues such as nutrition, advocacy and waste. * Ken Albala, University of the Pacific, USA. *
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Culture and Food underscores the serious and often determinant role that culture, in its most broadly accessible form, plays in establishing hierarchies of people, resources, and ideas, affecting all manner of social life. LeBesco and Naccarato provide the scaffolding of clearly linked sections, from media to materiality and aesthetics to arguments, creating a manageable resource for all. All the articles offer historical contexts for the emergence of food phenomena without reducing the popular to the ephemeral. * Alice Julier, Chatham University, USA. *
LeBesco and Naccarato (both, Marymount Manhattan College) assembled a dream team of food and culture scholars for this definitive handbook on the topic. Valuable as a classroom reader and for scholars new to the field, this is a welcome multivoice complement to the groundbreaking Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture, by Fabio Parasecoli, who is one of the contributors to the present volume. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. * CHOICE *

Author Bio

Kathleen LeBesco is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Marymount Manhattan College, USA. Peter Naccarato is Professor of English and World Literatures at Marymount Manhattan College, USA.