Nipissing grad giving history talk on competing voices in cookbooks

Nipissing’s History Seminar Series welcomes Emily Weiskopf-Ball to campus for a presentation titled Move over, Honey! I Can Help Too, Mom! This is How My Mother Cooked: Competing Voices in Family Cookbooks, on Friday, January 10 at 2:30 p.m. in room A252. A Nipissing graduate, Weiskopf-Ball is presently a doctoral student in History at Laurentian University.

Here’s an abstract on the talk: 

Gender critics have long documented the imbalance of food-related work in the home. This inequity is visible in community cookbooks, which have long been a forum for women, by women as well as in professionally published cookbooks that address a primarily female audience. In reality, however, foodmaking practices are much more complex than these works suggest. Today, men and children claim their own right to not only cook, but to cook in their own way. This sharing of space creates competition and forces us to reconsider traditional gender roles. Unlike published cookbooks, which have predominantly female authorial voices and generally address women, family cookbooks are an authentic mixture of female, male, and children's voices. Drawing on past and current academic literature to analyze some of my family's cookbooks, this presentation draws academic attention to family food practices. While the cookbooks I analyze are still predominantly feminine, the many male and child voices included in these collections, voices that are usually excluded from such works, prove that, when given a chance, these often silenced groups not only impact a family's food habits but also alter our understanding of feminine and masculine roles.

The presentation is free of charge and all are welcome.