Feeding Fascists The Politics of Women’s Food Work

Culinary Historians of Chicago

Feeding Fascists The Politics of Women’s Food Work Diana Garvin, PhD Feeding Fascism explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy’s Fascist regime (1922-1943) in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. Darvin looks at women’s experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. Feeding Fascism includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women’s political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations – cooking, feeding, and eating – to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, Feeding Fascism attests to the power of food. Diana Garvin is an Assistant Professor of Italian with a specialty in Mediterranean Studies in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. She conducted her postdoctoral research at the American Academy in Rome as the 2017-2018 Rome Prize winner for Modern Italian Studies. She received her PhD from Cornell University and her AB from Harvard University. Recorded via Zoom on May 13, 2022 https://dianagarvin.com/ Historical Cooking Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEgKUAn-MmE www.CulinaryHistorians.com