Week 12: Popular Culture and National Identity

Readings:

Reay Tannahill, Food in History, pp. 252-279 (Chap. 18: “A Gastronomic Grand Tour: 2”)

Claudia Roden, “Jewish Food in the Middle East,” in Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, eds., Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1994), pp. 153-158.

Anne Allison, “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus,” in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 296-314.

Musya Glants, “Food as Art: Painting in Late Soviet Russia,” in Musya Glants and Joyce Toomre, eds., Food in Russian History and Culture(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 215-237.

Facsimiles:

Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (1796)

Images:

An early London coffee house (1705)

Le Procope, Paris, founded 1686 (scroll to foot of page)

Russian art, 19th century:
Pavel Fedotov, Poor Aristocrat’s Breakfast (1849)
Vasili Perov, Tea-Drinking in Mytishchi, Near Moscow (1862)

Soviet art, 1918-1989:
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin: The Herring and Morning Still-Life (both 1918, both in Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg)
Sergei Gerasimov, Feast at the Collective Farm (1937)
Piotr Konshalovsky, Aleksei Tolstoi (1940-1)
Arkady Plastov, Harvest (1945) and Tractor Driver’s Supper (1951)
Vladimir Stozharov, Still-Life with Bread (1959)
Vyacheslev Kalinin, Portrait of Leonid Talochkin (1973)

Post-Soviet Russian art:
Natalia Nesterova, Ordering Lunch (1993)

Videos:

Japanese Food Culture: BENTO (3:20)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qkSh5ylLDQ&feature=related
How to make bento (6:31):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_hbPLsZvvo
How to make bento: Panda rice balls (2:37 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1WJ5wfVncg
How to make a Halloween bento (3:35 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90PoAeHAU9Q