Hispanic Cultural Food Studies

Inserting Hispanist voices into the arena of food studies, we have shown food to be central to a praxis of cultural studies within the transhispanic world. While food is often a potent marker of national identity, the food practices and food discourses under scrutiny in this volume speak not just to a plurality of identities, but also to the way that food, as both material object and discourse, crosses boundaries.

Other research in this area has outlined several theoretical modes of engaging with Spanish food discourse during the first two decades of the Franco regime as a site where identities are both imposed and contested. Positioning the gendering of food writing during the Franco regime alongside the regime's hyper-vigilance of the female body, this research also demonstrates how food discourse contributed to the production of fascist or Francoist space. The notion of culinary resistance – that is, the way food discourse can undermine or bypass cultural, political and culinary hegemony – has also informed this research.

Connected projects

'Special Issue Transhispanic Food Cultural Studies', co-edited by Associate Professor Lara Anderson and Associate Professor Rebecca Ingram, 2020.

'Control & Resistance, Food Discourse in Franco Spain', University of Toronto Press, 2020

In progress forthcoming Special Issue 'Gastrocracy: Peninsular History and the Politics of Food', co-editors, Professor Eugenia Afinoguénova and Associate Professors Lara Anderson and Rebecca Ingram.