Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2013 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize presented by the American Studies AssociationThe act of eating is both erotic and violent, as one wholly consumes the object being eaten. At the same time, eating performs a kind of vulnerability to the world, revealing a fundamental interdependence between the eater and that which exists outside her body.
Racial Indigestion explores the links between food, visual and literary culture in the nineteenth-century United States to reveal how eating produces political subjects by justifying the social discourses that create bodily meaning.Combing through a visually stunning and rare archive of childrens literature, architectural history, domestic manuals, dietetic tracts, novels and advertising, Racial Indigestion tells the story of the consolidation of nationalist mythologies of whiteness via the erotic politics of consumption. Less a history of commodities than a history of eating itself, the book seeks to understand how eating became a political act, linked to appetite, vice, virtue, race and class inequality and, finally, the queer pleasures and pitfalls of a burgeoning commodity culture. In so doing, Racial Indigestion sheds light on contemporary “foodie” cultures vexed relationship to nativism, nationalism and race privilege.
Review
Praise for the original edition:
“These are important books for serious study of Whitman's life and work and need to be present in every graduate and research library.”
-Choice
,
Review
“A dazzlingly original and important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century American literature and culture. It brings together the still-emergent field of food studies with Americanist literary and cultural studies, but not in order to ‘apply a set food studies methodology to literature, or merely to trace a theme. Tompkins brings a new lens to bear on the cultural forms of a particular time and place, resulting in new insights into familiar texts but also in new ways of seeing archives that may not have seemed worth further exploration.”-Glenn Hendler,Fordham University
Review
“A dazzlingly original and important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century American literature and culture. It brings together the still-emergent field of food studies with Americanist literary and cultural studies, but not in order to ‘apply a set food studies methodology to literature, or merely to trace a theme. Tompkins brings a new lens to bear on the cultural forms of a particular time and place, resulting in new insights into familiar texts but also in new ways of seeing archives that may not have seemed worth further exploration.”-Glenn Hendler,Fordham University
Review
“Racial Indigestion is as creative as it is theoretically rigorous and archivally grounded. Tompkins sets forth a marvelous, fruitful array of analytic sites and clever juxtapositions, tracing the politics inherent in the decline of the hearth and the rise of stoves, reimagining the mouth as the window to an alimentary politics, and tracking the post-Reconstruction politics of trade cards. The connections she makes between eating and vernacular culture make the book satisfyingly literary, even as it is so clearly a stellar work of cultural studies.”-Elizabeth Freeman,author of Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories
Review
"Racial Indigestion provides a highly accessible and well theorized approach to tracing the intersecting resonances between the orality, alimentary, and eroticism of the mouth in literary representation. It will be of great interest to scholars of food studies, African-American studies, and nineteenth-century American literature."- Journal of American Culture,
Review
"The best moments in Racial Indigestion come not in the large, embracingstatements of cultural analysis but in Tompkinss close and persuasive textualreadings."-American Quarterly,
Review
"highly ambitious and fascinating work"-Naomi Lesley,Children's Literature Association Quarterly
Synopsis
Winner of the 2013 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize presented by the American Studies AssociationWinner of the 2013 Association for the Study of Food and Society Book AwardPart of the American Literatures Initiative Series
The act of eating is both erotic and violent, as one wholly consumes the object being eaten. At the same time, eating performs a kind of vulnerability to the world, revealing a fundamental interdependence between the eater and that which exists outside her body. Racial Indigestionexplores the links between food, visual and literary culture in the nineteenth-century United States to reveal how eating produces political subjects by justifying the social discourses that create bodily meaning.
Combing through a visually stunning and rare archive of children s literature, architectural history, domestic manuals, dietetic tracts, novels and advertising, Racial Indigestion tells the story of the consolidation of nationalist mythologies of whiteness via the erotic politics of consumption. Less a history of commodities than a history of eating itself, the book seeks to understand how eating became a political act, linked to appetite, vice, virtue, race and class inequality and, finally, the queer pleasures and pitfalls of a burgeoning commodity culture. In so doing, Racial Indigestionsheds light on contemporary foodie culture s vexed relationship to nativism, nationalism and race privilege.
For more, visit the author's tumblr page: http: //racialindigestion.tumblr.com "
Synopsis
General Series Editors: Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley
Originally published between 1961 and 1984, and now available in paperback for the first time, the critically acclaimed Collected Writings of Walt Whitman captures every facet of one of America's most important poets.
Daybooks and Notebooks is an invaluable source for reference on Whitman's daily activities. This sixteen-year record supplements the biographical information provided in the six volumes of Whitmans Correspondence, functioning as an account book, diary, journal, commonplace book, and notebook all in one.
When Whitman began to keep them, the Daybooks were a personal record of predominantly business matters. As William White wrote in the introduction, “He was not only the author but the publisher of his works: he was likewise his own business manager, ship, and promoter. Whatever records he kept, of his sales and distribution, of printing and binding figures, of poetry and prose he sent to newspapers and magazines . . . he entered on the right-hand pages.” Volume I thus offers a rare look at Whitman as a businessman, tending as much to practical matters as to art.
Synopsis
About the Author
Kyla Wazana Tompkins is an Associate Professor of English and Gender and Womens Studies at Pomona College. She is a former journalist and restaurant critic.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century 1 Kitchen Insurrections 2 “She Made the Table a Snare to Them”: Sylvester Grahams Imperial Dietetics 3 “Everything Cept Eat Us”: The Mouth as Political Organ in the Antebellum Novel 4 A Wholesome Girl: Addiction, Grahamite Dietetics, and Louisa May Alcotts Rose Campbell Novels 5 “Whats De Use Talking Bout Dem Mendments?”: Trade Cards and Consumer Citizenship at the End of the Nineteenth Century Conclusion: Racial Indigestion Notes Bibliography Index About the Author An illustrated insert follows page