Farnsworth, Fiona Emily (2020) Contemporary literary foodways between Sub-Saharan Africa and the USA. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines literary representations and registrations of foodways between sub-Saharan Africa and the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The concept of ‘foodways’ is an organising principle of this thesis because of its useful properties as a catch-all term: it refers not only to what people eat, but also to how they eat it, where, and with whom. ‘Foodways’ are a complex series of processes and decisions, influenced to a great
extent by the material conditions of life: today, such conditions are often global in nature. I read foodways in novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Yaa Gyasi, and Imbolo Mbue, as well as in a comparative study of contemporary cookbooks, through
discussions of foodwork, the global supermarket, and gendered consumption.

This project is situated within a number of intersecting thematic fields, including food itself (both as commodity and as cultural symbol); migration, and the intersecting evaluations of race and class; and the particular significance of women’s writing and experience. In light of
this, then, this thesis aims to investigate female sub-Saharan African immigrant experience in the United States as a facet of a wider critical discourse regarding the world-system, immigration, and the combined impact of the two upon cultural identities. Food is, I suggest, hugely significant in terms of its materiality (ingredients, consumption), its preparation (foodwork, family), and in the sociocultural associations it holds (for the female body in particular, as well as in terms of ethnic significance and cultural tradition). I read food as a site which shapes – and is shaped by – sociopolitical struggles surrounding identity and power; and I read this discussion as one which is both explicitly and implicitly ‘worlded’, as foodways demonstrate the visitation of the global and national upon the local.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PS American literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Food in literature, African literature -- Africa, Sub-Saharan -- History and criticism, African literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism, African literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism, American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism, Women in literature, Women authors, African, African American women authors, Food habits in literature -- Africa, Food habits in literature -- United States, Dinners and dining in literature, Cooking in literature
Official Date:	September 2020
Dates:	Date Event September 2020 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Lazarus, Neil
Sponsors:	University of Warwick
Extent:	viii, 203 leaves
Language:	eng

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