DDGC Critical Food Studies Research Cooperative

The food we eat and the ways by which we sustain and nourish our bodies are deeply political. Food is embedded in global, capitalist networks of power and circulation, emerging from histories of the settler colonial state and ongoing occupation of Indigenous land on which the global food system now relies. Food has been and is often used as a weapon in wars and to oppress communities, as we’ve seen most recently in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The spatial distribution of food creates deep and lasting social and political inequalities: food deserts isolate people from access to (healthy, sustainable) food, and food sovereignty is a privilege for a select few. Food regulations are also often weaponized to appropriate Indigenous foodways and ban access to Indigenous ways of accessing food as part of land theft.

The labor of food, food production, and food transit has been and still is often invisibilized (but not invisible), performed overwhelmingly by feminized and racialized workers and tied to issues of migration, movement, and livelihoods. Production, transportation, and consumption of food is also deeply tied to climate change, climate justice, and the exploitation of our damaged planet.

Yet food is also a space of action toward community, justice, and other futures. The kitchen table, the drag brunch, the community garden, brewing and fermentation communities, and food festivals are spaces of and for community and connection. Growing, gathering, cooking, and eating food are simultaneously mundane and political acts. They are at once embedded in racialized and gendered discourses that uphold unequal access to land and inequitable distribution of essential resources and can also be practices of resistance and empowerment that give rise to grassroots and global movements to transform the food system.

Food has been and is closely tied to national, regional, or group belonging, and much of the historical research done in German Studies to date has relied on these paradigms in examining German food and foodways (Davis, Weinreb). Yet food also resists confinement within established frameworks. This makes it an exciting area of critical inquiry in the context of German Studies as it prompts us to challenge borders and national paradigms - we anticipate spilling over and beyond the borders of German studies.

Our cooperative will be hosting regular virtual meetings, including informal research-sharing and more formalized symposia. We will also be planning multiple forms of research output together, which may range from conferences and edited volumes to nontraditional modes of research expression.

Conveners & Contact Information

Bradley Boovy (Oregon State University): Bradley.Boovy[at]oregonstate.edu

Maria Stehle (University of Tennessee Knoxville): mstehle[at]utk.edu

Beverly Weber (University of Colorado Boulder): beverly[at]ddgccollective.org