Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, Toronto, Canada, May 22-25, 2014, Website

Call for panelists from Helen Zoe Veit : I would like to propose a panel for the 2014 Berks on food, gender, and poverty, broadly defined. I hope that the panel will put questions about food and eating into conversation with a range of themes such as gendered definitions of labor, voluntary or involuntary dietary austerity, the changing acceptability of various food practices in times of economic hardship, gendered taboos and prohibitions related to food, shifting definitions of health, and consumer culture.

My paper will examine how women’s eating and cooking changed as a result of the economic pressures of the Great Depression, based in part on research in the papers of the Works Progress Administration’s America Eats project. Other papers might consider the food practices of migrants or immigrants, longterm bodily effects of malnutrition, attempts by middle-class reformers to improve the diets of the poor, or the gendering and related status of particular foods. Food poverty might also be defined broadly, such as thinking about the political use of hunger strikes, austere eating practices voluntary adopted by people hoping to conform to gendered body images in mainstream media, or radically limited diets adopted for cultural, religious, or social reasons.

Please write me directly at hveit@msu.edu if you are interested in taking part in the panel.

Dr. Helen Zoe Veit
Assistant Professor, History
Michigan State University
hveit@msu.edu

Source: H-WOMEN@H-NET.MSU.EDU