Search results for ""author kathleen lebesco""

The influence of food has grown rapidly as it has become more and more intertwined with popular culture in recent decades. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture offers an authoritative, comprehensive overview of and introduction to this growing field of research. Bringing together over 20 original essays from leading experts, including Amy Bentley, Deborah Lupton, Fabio Parasecoli, and Isabelle de Solier, its impressive breadth and depth serves to define the field of food and popular culture. Divided into four parts, the book covers: - Media and Communication; including film, television, print media, the Internet, and emerging media - Material Cultures of Eating; including eating across the lifespan, home cooking, food retail, restaurants, and street food - Aesthetics of Food; including urban landscapes, museums, visual and performance arts - Socio-Political Considerations; including popular discourses around food science, waste, nutrition, ethical eating, and food advocacy Each chapter outlines key theories and existing areas of research whilst providing historical context and considering possible future developments. The Editors' Introduction by Kathleen LeBesco and Peter Naccarato, ensures cohesion and accessibility throughout. A truly interdisciplinary, ground-breaking resource, this book makes an invaluable contribution to the study of food and popular culture. It will be an essential reference work for students, researchers and scholars in food studies, film and media studies, communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, and American studies.

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Since World War II, when the diet and fitness industries promoted mass obsession with weight and body shape, fat has been a dirty word. In the United States, fat is seen as repulsive, funny, ugly, unclean, obscene, and above all as something to lose. "Bodies Out of Bounds" challenges these dominant perceptions by examining social representations of the fat body. The contributors to this collection show that what counts as fat and how it is valued are far from universal; the variety of meanings attributed to body size in other times and places demonstrates that perceptions of corpulence are infused with cultural, historical, political, and economic biases. The exceptionally rich and engaging essays collected in this volume question discursive constructions of fatness while analyzing the politics and power of corpulence and addressing the absence of fat people in media representations of the body. The essays are widely interdisciplinary; they explore their subject with insight, originality, and humor. The contributors examine the intersections of fat with ethnicity, race, queerness, class, and minority cultures, as well as with historical variations in the signification of fat. They also consider ways in which 'objective' medical and psychological discourses about fat people and food hide larger agendas. By illustrating how fat is a malleable construct that can be used to serve dominant economic and cultural interests, "Bodies Out of Bounds" stakes new claims for those whose body size does not adhere to society's confining standards.

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