Start Date
26-5-2026 11:30 AM
End Date
26-5-2026 11:45 AM
Description
The community charitable cookbook originated in the United States after the Civil War. Since then, this model of fundraising has become popular both in the United States and around the world, often adapted to suit different purposes. Although community charitable cookbooks are traditionally put together to benefit various social causes, they sometimes go beyond the purely charitable to serve other goals, like preserving cultural traditions, promoting social change, or sustaining collective identity within diasporic communities. My paper focuses on community cookbooks created with the goal of fundraising for disaster relief. I will examine not only their charitable motivations, but also their ideological significance. As Kennan Ferguson and other scholars have argued, cookbooks are deeply political texts and should be read as such. Four community cookbooks will be examined with the goal of examining politics or disaster relief. They were all written in times of crisis, ranging from the 19th to the 21st centuries, authored by different social groups and published in distant parts of the globe. Texts selected are Maria J. Moss’, A Poetical Cook-Book (Philadelphia, 1864); El Cocinero Español. Tested Recipes of Famous Spanish Dishes (Boston, MA, 1938); Chef José Andrés’ The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope (New York, 2023), and A pedir de vaca (Madrid, 2022). My paper aims to show how contextualizing community cookbooks can shed new light on the role played by food as a tool for social activism and an agent for change. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate that recipe books, as normative manifestations of specific culinary practices, should also be viewed as vehicles for the production and dissemination of ideological discourses.
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Included in
Wars, Hurricanes, and Volcanoes: Community Cookbooks and the Politics of Disaster Relief
The community charitable cookbook originated in the United States after the Civil War. Since then, this model of fundraising has become popular both in the United States and around the world, often adapted to suit different purposes. Although community charitable cookbooks are traditionally put together to benefit various social causes, they sometimes go beyond the purely charitable to serve other goals, like preserving cultural traditions, promoting social change, or sustaining collective identity within diasporic communities. My paper focuses on community cookbooks created with the goal of fundraising for disaster relief. I will examine not only their charitable motivations, but also their ideological significance. As Kennan Ferguson and other scholars have argued, cookbooks are deeply political texts and should be read as such. Four community cookbooks will be examined with the goal of examining politics or disaster relief. They were all written in times of crisis, ranging from the 19th to the 21st centuries, authored by different social groups and published in distant parts of the globe. Texts selected are Maria J. Moss’, A Poetical Cook-Book (Philadelphia, 1864); El Cocinero Español. Tested Recipes of Famous Spanish Dishes (Boston, MA, 1938); Chef José Andrés’ The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope (New York, 2023), and A pedir de vaca (Madrid, 2022). My paper aims to show how contextualizing community cookbooks can shed new light on the role played by food as a tool for social activism and an agent for change. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate that recipe books, as normative manifestations of specific culinary practices, should also be viewed as vehicles for the production and dissemination of ideological discourses.