Food and Literature

This volume examines food as subject, form, landscape, polemic, and aesthetic statement in literature. With essays analyzing food and race, queer food, intoxicated poets, avant-garde food writing, vegetarianism, the recipe, the supermarket, food comics, and vampiric eating, this collection brings together fascinating work from leading scholars in the field. It is the first volume to offer an overview of literary food studies and reflect on its origins, developments, and applications. Taking up maxims such as 'we are what we eat', it traces the origins of literary food studies and examines key questions in cultural texts from different global literary traditions. It charts the trajectories of the field in relation to work in critical race studies, postcolonial studies, and children's literature, positing an omnivorous method for the field at large.
Gitanjali Shahani is Associate Professor of English at San Francisco State University. She has co-edited Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2009). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Studies, and several edited collections. She is currently completing a book on food, race, and colonialism in the early modern period.