The Recipe for My Paper

Food for Thought

Paper Outline:

1.      Introduction

a.       Background of the modern woman

                                                              i.      Common discussions about women and the home, especially focusing on the kitchen.

                                                            ii.      The idea of women and domesticity-the working woman

b.      In literature the kitchen/food are often tied to women finding awe.  Awe as in liberation, reawakening, or discovering their power.

c.       Why is it a common theme? And how does food do that?   Discovering the connection

2.      Food and Philosophy

a.       Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. New York: Cornell UP, 1999. Print.  Her discussion of food and literature. 

b.      Kalaga, Tomasz. In Feeding Culture: The Pleasures and Perils of Appetite

c.       Why are women so connected to food

d.      Adam and Eve: Eve was the one who choose to leave their situation and experience life.  Again her decision and descent into experience and awe only came through partaking of the fruit.  Eating this fruit caused problems, but it also produced a reawakening of a new being, which also allowed them to see truth.  There is an association between food and women’s connection to it.  What more can I learn about this experience?  Find more scholarly articles discussing this idea.  I will probably need to make this its own paragraph

3.      Introducing the texts

a.       (My list really helped me to figure out what I wanted to talk about)  Since I am focusing on the ideas of the woman today I want to stress the relevance of these books.  They are within our generation.  What is literature saying?  Does it connect with our thoughts?  Following the trend of Eve

b.      All of these books were written by women

4.      Eat, Pray, Love

a.       Her situation

b.      It started with a journey.  She spent 4 months in Italy

c.       Her moments of awakening and food being a source that contributed to it

5.      Like Water for Chocolate

a.       Born in the kitchen

b.      Oppression

c.       Why was the food her source of liberation?  She escapes tradition and the things that held her back

6.      Chocolate

a.       If I have time I am going to use this book to also point how it changed her path

b.      She was held back by tradition and societies expectations

c.       Independent from  the beginning, but fought against it in order to become alive

7.      All of these women start in different situations, yet their one connection with awe all circles around food or the kitchen.  This is such a disturbing message for many “feminist” readers so what are these authors trying to convey. 

a.       Bring it all together

8.      Conclusion

Venues

Although scholarly journals would be ideal, I think I really want to focus on the food journals I found.  I feel that it would help me creatively express what is that I am researching.  I honestly didn’t know that these sort of journals existed, and it is fun to think there are magazines dedicated to something I was interested in writing about.  Because their focus is on food, I feel that it would help me to focus on that aspect, rather than get lost completely in the scholarly aspect.  I want to evenly mix the two and I feel like Graze and Lucky Peach share the same vision that I have.  I do feel like my idea is a little out there, but I think it would be a cool idea to get out there.  They seem to have the same vision that I have.