Rebecca Ingram, "Women's Work: How Culinary Cultures Shaped Modern Spain" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)
Sandie Holgu\xedn (Professor of History and Coeditor of the\xa0Journal of Women\u2019s History,\xa0University of Oklahoma)\xa0speaks with Rebecca Ingram (Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Literatures, University of San Diego) about her book,\xa0Women\u2019s Work: How Culinary Cultures Shaped Modern Spain\xa0(Vanderbilt University Press, 2022).\nToday Spain is widely known for its culinary achievements, drawing tourists from around the world to sample delights from Michelin-starred restaurants. But in the early twentieth century, visitors to Spain complained unceasingly about the poor, primitive qualities of Spanish food and its preparation. To Spanish intellectuals, this denigrated place of Spanish food within the European pantheon of \u201ccivilized\u201d cuisines seemed misplaced, and they set about to correct this mischaracterization. It is during this period of Spain\u2019s great imperial losses and uneven economic modernization that Ingram enters to analyze the place of culinary writing in Spain\u2019s modernization process. Ingram dives deeply into the culinary writings of Spanish feminists like Emilia Pardo Baz\xe1n and Carmen de Burgos, and the decidedly-not-feminist polymath physician, Gregorio Mara\xf1\xf3n\u2019, and she examines the culinary training ground for working-class women at Barcelona\u2019s Institut de Cultura i Biblioteca Popular de la Dona. Through her deep reading of culinary paratexts, she elucidates the numerous debates around women\u2019s labor and domesticity and its relationship to Spanish modernity. Ingram reveals "how culinary writing engaged these debates and reached women at the site of much of their daily labor\u2014the kitchen\u2014and, in this way, shaped their thinking."\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies