David Beriss
University of New Orleans
We recently renovated our kitchen using a company that does kitchen reno in Vancouver. As anyone who has done this knows, the process can be expensive and traumatic. You learn things about your house, your family, and yourself that you might not want to know. You spend more money than you expect, eat out more often than you should (or can stand), and drive your friends nuts. However, if you can step back and view the process more objectively, you might learn that the contemporary American “trophy kitchen” is a monument to social distinction, to the glories of consumption, to the ways of households, kinship, and social life. This ought to be obvious, I suppose, but I owe that insight not to my own hard won experience of kitchen renovation, but to an article by Emily Contois, “Not Just for Cooking Anymore: Exploring the Twenty-First-Century Trophy Kitchen,” which is in the new Graduate Journal of Food Studies (2014, volume 1:1-8). Contois examines the history of these kitchens, drawing on design books, popular culture (MTV Cribs!), and other sources, producing a nice overview of what these kitchens mean today. I think her analysis is on target and definitely worth a read. Maybe while sitting at the island in your new kitchen.
Not interested in conspicuous kitchen consumption? There is more! The Graduate Journal of Food Studies has articles on food justice and activism in Detroit, gender, patriarchy, and food propaganda in North Korea, and an analysis of best practices for farmers market incentive programs. The journal also features art work in between the articles and has a book review section.
So, this is a new food studies journal, which is no doubt a good thing. But this one is produced and edited by graduate students in Boston University’s Gastronomy Program. The journal is peer reviewed and published twice-a-year on-line, so you can access it immediately. The articles, reviews, and art are by students studying food (although not necessarily in food studies!) from a variety of universities, not just BU. In fact, the call for papers at the end of the journal encourages graduate students to submit their food-related essays to the journal. The deadline for the next issue is May 31, 2014. Submission guidelines are here.
FoodAnthropology 