FOLK 3601: English Material Culture TENTATIVE COURSE OUTLINE An examination of English material culture with special attention on material objects related to the production and consumption of foods. Regional foodways traditions will be used to examine current theoretical issues in material culture research. Text Wright, Clarissa Dickson. 2011. A History of English Food. London: Random House. Course Outline Weeks 1-­‐2 (St John’s campus) Class 1: Introduction to Material Culture What is material culture and how is it studied? What are the important themes and issues in material culture studies? How does food fit into material culture? Reading: Lofgren, Orvar. 2012. Material Culture. In A Companion to Folklore. Ed. Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-­‐Rokem. Chichester: Wiley-­‐Blackwell. 169-­‐84. Farquhar, Judith. 2006. Food, Eating, and the Good Life. In Handbook of Material Culture. Ed. Chris Tilley et al. London: Sage. 74-­‐84. (Available in QE II & Harlow library) 145-­‐60. Classes 2-­‐4: English Foodways How have foodways in England evolved over time? From the Medieval Larder and Tudor Kitchen, through the Elizabethans and Stuarts to nineteenth century and war-­‐time Britain, we will survey the major development in foodways in England. Reading Wright, Clarissa Dickson. 2011. A History of English Food. London: Random House. Class 5: Re/presentation How do museums re/present foodways? Reading: 1 Denker, Ellen Paul. 1997. Evaluating Exhibitions. History Museums and Material Culture. In American Material Culture. The Shape of the Field. Ed. Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison. Winterthur, Delaware: Winterthur Museum. 381-­‐400. Elias, Megan. 2012. Summoning the Food Ghosts: Food History as Public History. Public Historian 34.2: 13-­‐29. Lockwood, Yvonne R. 2010. Foodways in Museums: Representation and Interpretation. In Food and Meals at Cultural Crossroads. Ed. Patricia Lysaght Patricia, ed. Oslo, Norway: Novus. 301-­‐09. Schärer, Martin R. 1990. From Plate to Showcase-­‐Is Food Museogenic? Food & Foodways 4:1:73-­‐75. Weeks 3-­‐6 (Harlow campus) Fieldtrips Day 1 Harlow to Chichester (approx. 170 km; 2 h 10 min each way) i) Fishbourne Roman Palace & Gardens (near Chichester) http://sussexpast.co.uk/properties-­‐to-­‐discover/fishbourne-­‐roman-­‐palace-­‐-­‐ Museum and archeological site of the largest Roman domestic building in northern Europe. We will see what life was like at the Palace by visiting the museum as well as take a look behind the scenes in the Collections Discovery Centre. Our visit will include a guided tour and a workshop or demonstration and tasting session of food cooked to Roman recipes. Distance: 2 h 7 min Cost: Adult -­‐ £6.80 ea & £72 for presentation Time for visit: 2 h ii) Weald & Downland Open Air Museum (near Chichester) http://www.wealddown.co.uk/ Traditional buildings in a rural landscape that tell the story of the men, women and
children who lived and worked in them over a 600-year period. The 50-acre site has
exhibit houses that are furnished to recreate historic domestic interiors from 13001910. We will have a guided tour of the museum and take in the cooking demonstration
in their Tudor kitchen.
2 Distance: 2 h 7 min Cost: £10.20 per person; £35 guided tour Time for visit: 3 h iii) Medieval market Cross, Chichester Distance: 2 h 7 min Time for visit: 1 hr Enroute we will stop at Chichester, a thriving medieval market town. We will visit Chichester Cross, a late medieval covered English market cross, and take a short walking tour to explore architectural evolution around the market cross. Day 2 Harlow to Reading (approx. 119 km; 1 h 20 min each way) A) Half Day: MERL (Half Day Wednesday-­‐-­‐To have a guided tour of the collection, we may have to visit at 3:00 on Wednesday). Museum of English Rural Life MERL (Reading) http://www.reading.ac.uk/merl/about/merl-about.aspx - sthash.cZKO4w06.dpuf The Museum of English Rural Life houses the most comprehensive national collection of objects, books and archives relating to the history of food, farming and the countryside. We will visit the museum and have a behind the scenes guided tour of the stores where the collection is kept. Distance: 119 km; 1 h 20 min Cost: No admission but donations are welcome. Time for visit: 2 h B) Half Day: Harlow to London; approx. 35-­‐40 min by train i) Museum of London, 150 London Wall
London EC2Y 5HN
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/london-­‐wall/ We will explore the role of food in London’s history as we visit this innovative and comprehensive museum dedicated to telling the story of the city. Distance: 35-­‐40 min by train Cost: Free 3 Time for visit: 2 h ii) Twinings Tea Shop and Museum 216 The Strand http://twinings.co.uk/our-­‐stores/twinings,-­‐216,-­‐strand,-­‐london We will visit this small museum or “heritage site, “as Twinings bills it on their website, to view its display devoted to tea. It is located on the site that Twinings was founded in 1706 and has been selling tea for over 300 years as tea merchants. Cost: Free Time for Visit: 1 h Day 3 Harlow to Bath; approx. 2 h 32 min; 238 km ii)No. 1 Royal Crescent http://visitbath.co.uk/things-­‐to-­‐do/no-­‐1-­‐royal-­‐crescent-­‐p25441 We will have visit No.1 Royal Crescent, a Georgian town house. This was the first house to be built in the Crescent and originally provided luxury accommodation for the aristocratic visitors who came to take the waters and enjoy the social season. Reopened in 2013 after a major restoration project, No. 1 now provides visitors to the Crescent with an opportunity to see what life was like for the wealthy and their servants in 18th century Bath. Rooms include the original kitchen and scullery, coal-­‐
holes and servant’s corridors, the Housekeeper’s Room and Servants' Hall. Cost: £6.00 per ticket Time for visit: 1 h ii) Sally Lunn’s Historic Eating House and Museum http://www.sallylunns.co.uk We will visit Sally Lunn’s, the famous tea and eating house in the centre of Bath Housed in one of the oldest houses in Bath with the actual kitchen used by the legendary young Huguenot baker Sally Lunn in Georgian Bath to create the first Bath bun – a regional specialty. We will tour the museum and have Bath Cream tea at the restaurant that specializes in historic regional English dishes. Cost: £7.08 per person Timer for visit 1 h 15 min 4 Course Assignment Write an approximately 800-­‐1000 word review of the presentation of food at one of the museums we visited: You have been asked to write a review of a museum presentation of food for the food section/lifestyle section of a local newspaper. Your goal is to tell a potential audience about the exhibition or presentation and to provide some context for it so you will need to both describe and critique the exhibit or presentation and its rationale. This is NOT a research paper so you do not need to conduct outside research, but you can provide context by relating the food presentation to what we have covered in our course readings and discussions. Questions to consider (but you don’t need to confine yourself only to these questions): 1. What are your initial impressions? 2. What seems to be the main goal of presentation or exhibit? What story does it tell? 3. How does the food presentation compare with exhibits in the rest of the museum? 4. What objects are showcased? Grouped? To what purpose? 3. Does the display or presentation make you aware of where the objects were originally and the purposes that they served? Is this aspect important to a museum? 4. What can you learn about the food of a specific historical period though this presentation or exhibit? 5. How is the presentation interpreted? What do labels or interpreters add? 8. Is there one or more aspect that you find particularly effective? Is there a particularly weak aspect? Selected Bibliography General Buchli, Victor. 2002. The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Colquhoun, Kate. 2008. Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking. London: 5 Bloomsbury. Glassie, Henry. 1999. Material Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hick, Dan and Mary C. Beaudry, ed. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lempel, Diana. 2014. The Food is Not the Only Thing. Digest. A Journal of Foodways and Culture 2.2. http://digest.champlain.edu. Lofgren, Orvar. 2012. Material Culture. In A Companion to Folklore. Ed. Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-­‐Rokem. Chichester: Wiley-­‐Blackwell. 169-­‐84. Miller, Daniel, ed. 1998. Material Culture. Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tilley, Chris et al., ed. 2013. Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage. Woodward, Ian. Understanding Material Culture. 2007. London: Sage. Development of Foodways in England Anderson, Jay Allan. 1971. A Solid Sufficiency: An Ethnography of Yeoman Foodways in Stuart England. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI7125980 Brears, Peter. 2011. All the King's Cooks: The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace. London: Souvenir Press. Broomfield, Andrea. 2007. Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History. Westport, Conn: Prager. [electronic resource] http://qe2a-­‐
proxy.mun.ca/login?url=http://ebooks.abc-­‐clio.com/?isbn=9780313050749 Burnett, John. 1966. Plenty and Want: A Social History of Food in England from 1815 to the Present Day. London: Nelson. -­‐-­‐-­‐., ed. 2004. England Eats Out: A Social History of Eating Out in England from 1830 to the Present. Harlow, England: Pearson/Longman. Dawson, Mark. 2009. Plenti and Grase : Food and Drink in a Sixteenth-­‐Century Household: 'Plenti and Grase bi in this Plase Whyle Everi Man is Plesed in his Degre.' Totnes: Prospect Books, 2009. Forward, Charles Walter. 2012. Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England. rarebookclub.com 6 Frantzen, Allen. 2014. Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. [electronic resource] http://qe2a-­‐
proxy.mun.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scop
e=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=655282 Gowdy-­‐Wygant, Cecilia. 2013. Cultivating Victory: The Women's Land Army and the Victory Garden Movement. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Hagen, Ann. 2006. Anglo-­‐Saxon Food and Drink: Production, Processing, Distribution and Consumption. Hockwold cum Wilton, Norfolk, England: Anglo-­‐Saxon Books. Hammond, Peter. 2005. Food & Feast in Medieval England. Gloucestershire, England: Sutton Publishing. Hope, Annette. 2005. Londoners' Larder: English Cuisine from Chaucer to the Present. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Jennings, Paul. 2007. The Local: A History of the English Pub. Stroud: Tempus. Mennell, Stephen. 1996. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Muldrew, Craig. 2011. Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness : Work and Material culture in Agrarian England, 1550-­‐1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rich, Rachel. 2011. Bourgeois Consumption: Food, Space and Identity in London and Paris, 1850-­‐1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Rose, Sarah. 2011. For all the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink. New York: Penguin. Armstrong, W. A. and Roger Scola, ed. 1992. Feeding the Victorian City: The Food Supply of Manchester, 1770-­‐1870. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sim, Alison. 2005. Food & Feast in Tudor England. Stroud: Sutton Pub. 2005, c1997. Tames, Richard. 2003. Feeding London. London: Historical Publications. Thirsk, Joan. 2007. Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-­‐1760. London: Hambledon Continuum. White, Eileen, ed. 2007. The English Kitchen: Historical Essays. Totnes: Prospect. 7 Wilson, C. Anne. 1991. Food and Drink in Britain, From the Stone Age to the 19th Century. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers. Woolgar, C. M. et al. 2006. Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, Clarissa Dickson. 2011. A History of English Food. London: Random House. Representation Denker, Ellen Paul. 1997. Evaluating Exhibitions. History Museums and Material Culture. In American Material Culture. The Shape of the Field. Ed. Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison. Winterthur, Delaware: Winterthur Museum. 381-­‐400. Elias, Megan. 2012. Summoning the Food Ghosts: Food History as Public History. Public Historian 34.2: 13-­‐29. Kirsehnblatt-­‐Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lindholm, Charles. 2007. Culture and Authenticity. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-­‐Blackwell. Lockwood, Yvonne R. 2010. Foodways in Museums: Representation and Interpretation In Food and Meals at Cultural Crossroads. Ed. Patricia Lysaght Patriciaed. Oslo, Norway: Novus. 301-­‐09. Meltonville, Marc, et al. 2007. The Taste of the Fire, The Story of the Tudor Kitchens at Hampton Court Palace. Surrey, England: Historic Royal Palaces, Hampton Court Palace. Ousby, Ian. 2012. The Englishman's England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism London: Pimlico. Riggins, Stephen. 1994. Fieldwork in the Living Room: An Autoethnographic Essay. In The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-­‐Semiotics of Objects. S. H. Riggins, ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 101-­‐147. Schärer, Martin R. 1990. From Plate to Showcase-­‐Is Food Museogenic? Food & Foodways 4:1:73-­‐75. Scott, Julie and Tom Selwyn, ed. 2011. Thinking Through Tourism. London: Berg. Selected Video Resources from BBC BBC. Tales from the Green Valley. Episodes 1-­‐12. 29 min. each. 8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrYzzr8yja6FUA6S_xLEwRkc6ygmij5xQ BBC. The True History of English Food. 58 min. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ3JGxfHFCA BBC. A People’s History Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner . 58 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrpTSIMA7wM BBC. Clarissa and the King's Cookbook. 29 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=803rjwGlS-­‐U&list=PLMQ94-­‐
7VaifUnNUzmQySBH-­‐gnVqIAo3Iu 9