In the Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies (GSFS) 401Winter 2020 class on Food, Gender, and Environment taught by Dr. Alex Ketchum, students are analyzing the ways that food accessibility and environmental threats are gendered, sexualized, and racialized within the global context. As part of the course, students visited McGill’s archives and special collections in order to have a hands on experience with historical cookbooks (more on that here: http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/2020/02/field-trip-to-mcgill-rare-books-and.html).
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Following the visit, students chose cookbooks and/or cooking-related materials from the McGill archives or from their own personal collections to explore in more detail. In particular, students reflected on the ways that food, gender, and environmental issues all come to the fore in historical and family cookbooks.
This week students cooked recipes from their chosen cookbooks and brought them into class to share.
As a group, we discussed the meanings of the recipes, layout of the cookbooks, and larger connections to food history and social justice issues. Family history, local knowledge, gendered labour, and memory were particularly poignant aspects of the conversation.
The Special Series of Student Posts is a collection of the students' reflections on this process. Over the next few weeks you can look forward to a series of blog posts written by the class. Please enjoy!