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- Volume 34, Issue 2, 2015
European Journal of American Culture - Volume 34, Issue 2, 2015
Volume 34, Issue 2, 2015
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Cooking with Hannibal: Food, liminality and monstrosity in Hannibal
More LessAbstractFood plays a central role in the NBC show Hannibal, Bryan Fuller’s recent re-imagination of the well-known tale about a serial-killing psychiatrist named Dr Hannibal Lecter. This article traces food’s path from procurement via preparation to its consumption. Along this path, the article highlights how the show constantly questions binaries by intelligently interconnecting the eponymous character, who happens to be a cannibal, to his relation to food. In the end, this article demonstrates that food, a liminal object that enters the human body from the outside, is a remarkably potent semiotic vehicle for relating a story about a human monster who rejects and yet, surprisingly, at the same time reinforces cultural boundaries.
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Gourmet babies: French accents in American baby food
Authors: Sara Lewis Dunne and Chrys EganAbstractTwentieth-century American parenting and pediatric norms dictated that babies transition from breast milk or formula to solids through a specific progression of flavourless foods. The pre-packaged baby food paradigm started shifting in the 1960s– 1970s when Americans were questioning everything and returning to nature. Baby food, both home-made and commercial, began including a broader range of tastes, textures and flavours. Over the past 40–50 years, American adults have grown in their awareness of gourmet, ethnic and organic foods, not only for themselves but for their babies. The current trend of French influences on American parenting and food choices supports the reawakening trend in the United States of savouring food for pleasure, enjoying home-cooked meals, and demanding diverse high-quality commercial foods, not only for adults but for children as well. This French-infused American food renaissance is reflected in rapidly declining sales of traditional US baby food products, and the subsequent industry reinvention to meet new demands. Baby foods now include pomegranate, kale, quinoa, spices, and other ingredients that were not available in mass-marketed baby foods a decade ago.
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How ‘il caffé sospeso’ became ‘suspended coffee’: The neo-liberal re-‘invention of tradition’ from Bourdieu to Bourdieu
More LessAbstractThis article analyses the way in which il caffè sospeso, an old Italian tradition of giving needy people a free coffee, has become ‘suspended coffee’, a current trend in the United States. This study explains the Italian phenomenon through Bourdieu’s ‘classic’ theory linked to food as provider of social distinction, distance from reality and culinary capital. To explain the new American model, this article builds on Bourdieu’s later work on neo-liberalism. This double theoretical approach enables a double methodological approach. The old Italian practice is investigated through Bourdieu’s historical field analysis. The American, neo-liberal model is studied through political economy analysis of websites owned by the companies supporting suspended coffee. The results show that in Italy il caffè sospeso was an opportunity for the donor to gain social distinction thanks to distance from reality, not providing the poor with something more necessary than a coffee. In the United States, private companies have taken hold of this tradition and altered the old relationship between donor and receiver. Giving is no longer spontaneous. Companies advise/force their clients to donate and confer culinary capital to ‘elected’ customers on their websites, with texts aiming to advertise rather than to inform. In conclusion, neo-liberalism exploits old traditions for commercial reasons.
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Consumed: Food in The Hunger Games
Authors: Lori L. Parks and Jennifer P. YamashiroAbstractIn the futuristic dystopia of The Hunger Games, food divides rich and poor, empowered and oppressed, pure and putrid. It also provides a lens to analyse power and rebellion through theory, surveillance, and the art historical genre of memento mori. This article considers the following: How does food represent and enact power? How does food send moral and political messages? How does the government control and, in fact, author the lives of the citizens? How do Katniss’ rebellions reflect, represent and magnify the crisis of the state?
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 43 (2024)
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Volume 42 (2023)
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Volume 41 (2022)
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Volume 40 (2021)
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Volume 39 (2020)
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Volume 38 (2019)
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Volume 37 (2018)
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Volume 36 (2017)
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Volume 35 (2016)
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Volume 34 (2015)
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Volume 33 (2014)
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Volume 32 (2013)
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Volume 31 (2012)
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Volume 30 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 29 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 28 (2009)
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Volume 27 (2008)
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Volume 26 (2007 - 2008)
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Volume 25 (2005 - 2007)
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Volume 24 (2005)
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Volume 23 (2004)
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Volume 22 (2003)
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Volume 21 (2002)
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Volume 20 (2001 - 2002)