Start Date
29-5-2024 10:00 AM
End Date
29-5-2024 10:15 AM
Description
Despite growing acknowledgement of the variety of cultures that developed Southern Appalachia’s cuisine, some popular food writing continues to highlight the so-called insular nature of its food, drink, and culinary festivals. Regional tourists, especially those visiting its Blue Ridge or Smoky mountains, also remain likely to experience a delimited, often problematic Scots-Irish or white-European pioneer past, including when they eat and drink. Billboards advertise the outlaw Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Show, visitors choose from moonshine tastings in dilapidated looking but new distilleries, and diners enjoy gourmet biscuits alongside gravy “flights” at trendy restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina. Appalachian Studies and food culture scholarship addresses how tourism creates as well as challenges these regional images, but rhetorical analysis offers a helpful addition. Specifically, greater attention to regional migration patterns, rhetorically analyzing messages about the movement of people, crops, and goods, illustrates how ideas about Southern Appalachia circulate and gain traction through foods featured in culinary tourism. We trace stories of three grains, oats, barley, and corn, from Scotland, to Ulster, to the Appalachian mountains to argue that their histories offer messages of cultural adaptation alongside ones supporting narratives about the region’s white settler heritage. Closer attention to regional migration highlights how certain foodways became “Appalachian” in harmful ways that do not reflect its complicated cultural interdependence. Rhetorically tracing these grains locates messages of possibility that emphasize different connections between land, people, and culture. Their stories present opportunities to shape how tourists experience the region and its perception in the public imagination.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/9nw9-9h77
Included in
American Studies Commons, Appalachian Studies Commons, Food Studies Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, Regional Economics Commons, Regional Sociology Commons, Rural Sociology Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, Tourism Commons
Lost But Not Found: Southern Appalachia, Migration Patterns, and Culinary Tourism
Despite growing acknowledgement of the variety of cultures that developed Southern Appalachia’s cuisine, some popular food writing continues to highlight the so-called insular nature of its food, drink, and culinary festivals. Regional tourists, especially those visiting its Blue Ridge or Smoky mountains, also remain likely to experience a delimited, often problematic Scots-Irish or white-European pioneer past, including when they eat and drink. Billboards advertise the outlaw Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Show, visitors choose from moonshine tastings in dilapidated looking but new distilleries, and diners enjoy gourmet biscuits alongside gravy “flights” at trendy restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina. Appalachian Studies and food culture scholarship addresses how tourism creates as well as challenges these regional images, but rhetorical analysis offers a helpful addition. Specifically, greater attention to regional migration patterns, rhetorically analyzing messages about the movement of people, crops, and goods, illustrates how ideas about Southern Appalachia circulate and gain traction through foods featured in culinary tourism. We trace stories of three grains, oats, barley, and corn, from Scotland, to Ulster, to the Appalachian mountains to argue that their histories offer messages of cultural adaptation alongside ones supporting narratives about the region’s white settler heritage. Closer attention to regional migration highlights how certain foodways became “Appalachian” in harmful ways that do not reflect its complicated cultural interdependence. Rhetorically tracing these grains locates messages of possibility that emphasize different connections between land, people, and culture. Their stories present opportunities to shape how tourists experience the region and its perception in the public imagination.