gastro-modernism: food, literature, culture

This volume of essays surveys gastronomy across global literary modernisms. The phenomenon of food culture is iconically modern. Modernists explore public and domestic spaces where food and drink are prepared and served, as much as they create them in the modernist imagination through narrative, language, and style. Modernism as a cultural and artistic movement also highlights the historical politics of food and eating.

As the chapters in Gastro-Modernism reveal, critical trends in food studies alert us to many social concerns that emerge in the modernist period because of expanding food literacy and culture. The result is that food production, consumption, and scarcity are abiding themes in modernist literature and culture, reflecting tensions amidst colonial, agricultural, and industrial settings. This timely volume ultimately shows how global literary modernisms engage with food culture known as gastronomy to express anxieties about modernity as much as to celebrate the excesses modern lifestyles produce.

Derek Gladwin is Assistant Professor in Language and Literacy Education at University of British Columbia. His authored or co-edited books include Eco-Joyce (co-ed, 2014), Unfolding Irish Landscapes (co-ed, 2016), Contentious Terrains (2016), and Ecological Exile (2018). Please visit www.derekgladwin.com.