Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: A Taste of Power
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
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COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/vester.cfm * http://www.american.edu/uploads/docs/VesterF2014.pdf * http://foodfatnessfitness.com/author/katharina-vester/ * https://networks.h-net.org/node/35706/discussions/127919/katharina-vester-taste-power-food-and-american-identities
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
no2003095888
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/no2003095888
HEADING:
Vester, Katharina
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__ |a A taste of power, 2015: |b ECIP title page (Katharina Vester) data view (born June 14, 1967)
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:University of Potsdam and Free University of Berlin, M.A.; University of Bochum, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Professor and editor. University of Bochum, Bochum, Germany, assistant professor of American studies, 2002-07; American University, Washington, DC, Scholar-in-Residence and Clendenen Postdoctoral Fellow, 2007-10, director of American Studies Program, 2009-14, assistant professor of history, teacher in the American studies program, 2010—.
MEMBER:European Association for American Studies, German Association for American Studies.
AWARDS:Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence, for the article “Regime Change: Gender, Class, and the Invention of Dieting in Post-Bellum America” in the Journal of Social History.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Social History, Encyclopedia of American Women’s History, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, and International Review for Humboldtian Studies.
SIDELIGHTS
Professor and editor Katharina Vester writes about food and food culture. At American University in Washington, DC, she is associate professor of history and teaches in the American Studies program. She is also coeditor with Kornelia Freitag of Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America. Her article about the invention of dieting for Journal of Social History received the Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence. She holds a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Bochum.
In 2015, Vester published A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities, part of the “California Studies in Food and Culture” series. In an interdisciplinary study, Vester examines how food has become a symbol of political achievement, citizenship, ethnicity, and social and economic identity. Using a variety of source material, such as cookbooks, manuals, novels, films, autobiographies, newspapers, and cooking shows, Vester proclaims that food is power and is used as a determinant of culture, nationality, social status, and social mobility. Food, food choices, recipes, and food used in festivals and cultural identity have been used throughout various cultures. Vester also discusses gender relations with food, food associations with homosexuality, food during historical periods, changes in cuisine during and after the American Revolution, food in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the popularity of cooking shows on television and YouTube.
For example, Vester shows how the significance of food used in the 1930s movie The Maltese Falcon reflects the ideal masculinity between the world wars. The idea perpetuated at the time was that men must cook for themselves to remain manly, as food cooked by women was tainted by their manipulative emotions and frailty. Writing online at Page 99, reviewer Marshal Zeringue remarked that the book “shows how ideas about food encase ideas about gender and identity in general. … When read against each other, these sources present a novel entryway into the understanding of social structure in the past.”
On H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Caroline Rosenthal wrote: “Vester’s book is a win for everyone, academics and laymen who are interested in the literary, social, historical, anthropological or medial meanings of food. The low burden of theory work has the advantage that Vester’s book is distinguished by a high readability. Nevertheless, the reader would have wished at some places more theoretical reflection,” such as further describing her concepts of “normative Masculinities” and “hegemonic femininity.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Food Fatness Fittness, http://foodfatnessfitness.com/ (June 1, 2017), author profile.
ONLINE
American University at Washington Website, http://www.american.edu/ (June 1, 2017), author profile.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org, (June 19, 2017), Caroline Rosenthal, review of A Taste of Power.
Page 99, http://page99test.blogspot.com (November 11, 2015), Marshal Zeringue, review of A Taste of Power.*
Katharina Vester
Associate Professor
Department of History
Katharina Vester is Assistant Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in cultural theory, transnational studies, and the dynamics of power in everyday practices. She was Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Bochum from 2002-2007, where she earned her Ph.D. summa cum laude. She holds an MA in American Culture from the University of Potsdam and the Free University of Berlin. Her book A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities was published in November 2015 by the University of California Press. It discusses identity narratives and resistance to hegemonic norms of gender, race and sexuality in culinary discourses.
Other recent publications include "Regime Change: Gender, Class, and the Invention of Dieting in Post-Bellum America" in the Journal of Social History (Fall 2010) and "Queer Appetites, Butch Cooking – Recipes for Lesbian Subjectivities," Queers in American Popular Culture, edited by Jim Elledge (Praeger, 2010). She is the editor, with Kornelia Freitag, of Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America, in series: Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies (LIT Verlag, 2008).
Degrees
PhD, American Studies, University of Bochum
MA, American Culture, University of Potsdam and Free University of Berlin
Languages SpokenFluent in English and German, State certificate in Latin and ancient Greek, Reading knowledge of Spanish
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OFFICE
CAS - History
Battelle Tompkins - 133
On Leave
CONTACT INFO
(202) 885-2409
(Office)
Send email to Katharina Vester
FOR THE MEDIA
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
SEE ALSO
American Studies Program
Partnerships & Affiliations
American Studies Association
Member
European Association for American Studies
Member
German Association for American Studies
Member
Teaching
FALL 2017
AMST-296 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Superheroes & American Society
Description
AMST-330 Contemporary American Culture: Food, Media, and Culture
Description
HIST-480 Senior Thesis in History I
Description
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
HONORS, AWARDS, AND FELLOWSHIPS
Summa cum laude for doctoral dissertation, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2007
DAAD Doctoral Fellowship (German Academic Exchange Service), 2004-05
American Studies Prize, best M.A. thesis, Universität Potsdam, 2002
American Studies Prize, best seminar paper, Universität Potsdam, 2000
PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS
“Queer Appetites, Butch Cooking,” Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2009.
“Reducing Women: Politics and Power in Early Diet Discourses,” inaugural Patrick Clendenen Conference, Washington, D.C., 2008.
Commentator, “New Directions in Queer Excavations,” Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2008.
“Beauty and the Feast: Diet and the Female Body in American Popular Culture,” Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies, Dortmund, 2005.
“Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein,” Another Language – Contemporary U.S. Poetic Experiments in a Changing World, Bochum, 2005.
“’Date with a Dish’ - Kochen und Konstruktion von Männlichkeit in den USA der 30er und 40er Jahre” [Cooking and the Construction of Masculinity in the USA of the 1930s and 40s], International Doctoral Colloquium, Bochum, 2004.
“Viral Discourse and Cultural Infection: Alejandro Morales’ Rag Doll Plagues,”Representations of Chicana/o Culture(s): Images, Texts, Products, Potsdam, 2002.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Kornelia Freitag and Katharina Vester, eds., Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America, in series: Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008).
“Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein,” in Kornelia Freitag and Katharina Vester, eds., Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America, in series: Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008).
“‘I Yam What I Am’: Identitätsstiftende Texte aus der afro-amerikanischen Küche” [Identity Construction in Texts from African American Foodways], in Peter Drexler, ed., Negotiating Diversity: Aspects of Identity in Anglophone Culture (Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2003), 191-208.
“International Students - Transnational Research,” in Walter Grünzweig, ed., The United States in Global Contexts: American Studies after 9/11 and Iraq (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004).
“Turning the Holocaust into 200,000 Square Feet of Cement.” Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, October 21, 2005.
“Das dritte Geschlecht. Male Warbrides, musizierende Transvestiten, und Metrosexuality: Die Herstellung von Heterosexualität als hegemonialer Diskurs.” [The Third Gender: Male Warbrides, Musical Transvestites, and Metrosexuality: The Creation of Heterosexuality as a Hegemonic Discourse.] Schwubile (January 2004).
Editor, Food and Culture, student online journal, 2008.
TRANSLATIONS
Herta Nagl-Docekal, Feminist Philosophy, trs. Katharina Vester (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004).
“Excellent” translation - Linda López McAlister in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.
Ottmar Ette, Literature on the Move, trs. Katharina Vester (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2003).
AU NEWS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Undergrads Present at Gender and Foodways Conference
Undergrads Present at Gender and Foodways Conference
Three undergrads from Professor Katharina Vester's Food, Media, and Culture class present at Gender …
Read More
American Studies Halloween Screening: Vampires at AU
American Studies Halloween Screening: Vampires at AU
Students and faculty enjoyed burritos, analysis, and treats at this year’s Halloween screening new NBC …
Read More
Savvy City Girl Blogger Teaching Social Media
Savvy City Girl Blogger Teaching Social Media
Sex and cancer blogger finds a niche in the American Studies Program.…
Read More
Professor Vester Weighs in on Occupy Wall Street
Professor Vester Weighs in on Occupy Wall Street
Professor Katharina Vester provides an American studies perspective of the Occupy movement.…
Read More
Fat Cats, Bodybuilders, and Corsets
Fat Cats, Bodybuilders, and Corsets
Nearly two centuries ago, American men were the first on the scales.…
Read More
America’s Yo-Yo Diet: How Culture Rules Waistline
America’s Yo-Yo Diet: How Culture Rules Waistline
From voluptuous to skinny-mini, culture dictated diet trends for American women.…
Read More
AU American Studies Program Hosts CHASA 2012
AU American Studies Program Hosts CHASA 2012
Chesapeake American Studies Association Conference held at American University in March.…
Read More
Food Education Nation
Food Education Nation
American University’s Center for Food Studies is part of the food research trend in higher education.…
Read More
Loving Your Figure, Thick or Thin
Loving Your Figure, Thick or Thin
American University graduate research and campus services help students with body image concerns.…
Read More
===
KATHARINA VESTER
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Assistant Professor, History, American University. 2010-present. Director, American Studies Program, American University. Fall 2009-Fall
2014.
Scholar-in-Residence and Clendenen Postdoctoral Fellow, American Studies
Program, American University. 2007-2010.
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin. American Studies Program, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. 2002-2007.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. American Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2007. Awarded summa cum laude. Dissertation: A Taste of Power: Collaboration and Resistance in Culinary Discourses.
M.A. Magistra Artium with highest honors, Universität Potsdam, Freie- Universität Berlin, 2002. Major: American Culture and Literature; Minors: Latin American Studies and Philosophy.
Research Associate, Center for Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2001-02.
Summer Session, American Studies Program, University of California at Berkeley, 1998.
Summer Session, English Literature, University of California at Los Angeles, 1997.
PUBLICATIONS
Monograph
A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities
This book-length manuscript explores the construction of national, gendered and sexually determined subjects through food practices and discourses and argues that culinary practices, as a site of everyday cultural expression, provide an opportunity to challenge and resist hegemonic relations of power. (Under contract with University of California Press. Estimated publication date: November 2015)
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“A Date with a Dish: Revisiting Freda De Knight’s African American Cuisine.”
High and Low on the Hog: African American Foodways from Slavery to Obama. Ed. Jennifer Wallach. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. (forthcoming Fall 2015.)
“Bodies to Die for: Negotiating Hegemonic Beauty Ideals in Detective Novels.” The Journal of Popular Culture (forthcoming February 2015).
“See Dad Cook! Fatherhood and Cooking Advice in the 21st Century.” The Contested and the Poetic: Gender and the Body. Ed. Amanda Stone. Witney, UK: Interdisciplinary Press, 2014.
“‘The American Table’: Tourism, Empire and Anti-Immigration Sentiment in American Cookbooks in the 19th Century.” Transnational American
EMAIL VESTER@AMERICAN.EDU
11.10.2014 KATHARINA VESTER 2
Studies. Ed. Udo Hebel. American Studies: A Monograph Series.
Heidelberg: Universitaetsverlag Winter, June 2012. 445-465.
"Regime Change: Gender, Class, and the Invention of Dieting in Post-Bellum
America." Journal of Social History (Fall 2010), 39-70.
"Queer Appetites, Butch Cooking – Recipes for Lesbian Subjectivities."
Queers in American Popular Culture. Ed. Jim Elledge. Santa Barbara:
Praeger, October 2010. 11-21.
"Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in
Gertrude Stein." Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America. Eds. Kornelia Freitag and Katharina Vester. Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008. 289-300.
"'I Yam What I Am': Identitätsstiftende Texte aus der afro-amerikanischen Küche" [Identity Construction in Texts from African American Foodways]. Negotiating Diversity: Aspects of Identity in Anglophone Culture. Ed. Peter Drexler. Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2003. 191-208.
Edited Volume
Kornelia Freitag and Katharina Vester, eds., Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America. Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008. 306 pp.
Other Academic Publications
Editor, Food, Media, and Culture, student online journal, 2008, 2012, 2014. “Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern
American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century by Helen Zoe Veit”
Review. Food, Society, Culture. (Forthcoming Winter 2014/15.) "Dieting." The Encyclopedia of American Women's History. Ed. Hasia Diner.
New York: Facts on File, forthcoming.
“The Flying Classroom: The Hopes and Perils of Online Teaching.”
Festschrift TU Dortmund. Ed. Walter Grünzweig. Münster: LIT Verlag,
(forthcoming).
"International Students - Transnational Research." The United States in
Global Contexts: American Studies after 9/11 and Iraq. Ed. Walter
Grünzweig. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004. 156.
"Das dritte Geschlecht. Male Warbrides, musizierende Transvestiten, und
Metrosexuality: Die Herstellung von Heterosexualität als hegemonialer Diskurs." [The Third Gender: Male Warbrides, Musical Transvestites, and Metrosexuality: The Creation of Heterosexuality as a Hegemonic Discourse.] Schwubile (January 2004): 1-2.
Co-editor of Ruberta, Ruhr-Universität Bochum women's bulletin, 2004. Other Publications
"Occupy Wall Street.” CAS Website, December 8, 2011, http://
www.american.edu/cas/news/katharina-vester-occupy-wall-street.cfm. "Turning the Holocaust into 200,000 Square Feet of Cement." Jewish Bulletin
of Northern California, October 21, 2005.
Scholarly Translations: Books
Herta Nagl-Docekal, Feminist Philosophy, trs. Katharina Vester. Boulder:
Westview Press, 2004. ("Excellent" translation - Linda López McAlister in
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.)
Ottmar Ette, Literature on the Move, trs. Katharina Vester. Amsterdam, New
York: Rodopi, 2003.
11.10.2014 KATHARINA VESTER 3
Scholarly Translations: Articles
Ottmar Ette and Peter Wagner, "Sex Literally Revisited: Being-a-Body and Having-a-Body in Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Luisa Futoransky and Juan Manuel de Prada." Framing Women: Changing Frames of Representation from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism. Eds. Sandra Caroll, Brigit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003. 251-82.
Ottmar Ette, "The Scientist as World Citizen: Alexander von Humboldt and the Beginning of Cosmopolitics." International Review for Humboldtian Studies/Revista Internacional de Estudios Humboldtianos/Internationale Zeitschrift für Humboldt-Studien 2 (2001).
Jean Franco, "La Malinche: Vom Geschenk zum Geschlechtervertrag" [La Malinche: From the Gift to the Sexual Contract] in "La Malinche:" Interkulturalität und Geschlecht. Eds. Barbara Dröscher, Carlos Rincón.
Berlin: Verlag Walter Frey, 2001. 41-60.
GRANTS AND AWARDS
Faculty Research Support Grant, AU (course release), Fall 2014.
American Association of University Women (AAUW), American Fellowship,
2012-13.
AU International Travel Award, 2011, 2012.
CAS Mellon Grant for Faculty Research, 2011, 2012.
Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence, Association for the Study of Food
and Society, 2011.
Dean’s Research Assistant Award (with Linda Monahan), 2011.
Schlesinger Library Research Grant, 2010.
DAAD Doctoral Fellowship (German Academic Exchange Service), 2004-05. American Studies Prize, best M.A. thesis, Universität Potsdam, 2002. American Studies Prize, best seminar paper, Universität Potsdam, 2000.
CONFERENCES AND GUEST LECTURES
Presentations and Panel Discussions
“See Dad Cook! Fatherhood and Culinary Advice in the 21st Century,”
Femininities and Masculinities 4, Lisbon, 2014.
“‘I Hold the Reins of Comfort and Health in My Own Hands’--Disciplining the
Bourgeois Subject in 19th Century Dieting Instructions,” Obesity,
Health and the Liberal Subject, Washington, D.C. 2013.
“‘The Diet of Brain-Workers’: Empire-Building in Victorian Nutritional Advice,”
American Studies Association, San Juan, 2012.
"'I Yam What I Yam': Soul Food, Diasporic Cuisines and Contested African
American Identities," Crossroads in Cultural Studies, Paris, 2012. "'The Diet of Brain Workers': Food, Citizenship and American Empire in the
Late 19th Century," European Association of American Studies, Izmir,
2012.
"Disciplining Cultural Studies: Kulturwissenschaften and Cultural Studies in
Germany," Cultural Studies Association, San Diego, 2012. "'Wolves in Chef’s Clothing’: The Male Gourmet After World War II," Food
Networks: Gender and Foodways, South Bend, 2012.
"'The American Table': Culinary Tourism and Anti-Immigration Sentiment in
American Cookbooks between the Civil War and World War I,"
German Association of American Studies, Regensburg, 2011. Panelist, "Cultural Studies and the Undergraduate," Cultural Studies
Association, Chicago, 2011.
11.10.2014 KATHARINA VESTER 4
"’Wolves in Chefs' Clothing': Recipes for Masculinity in Hemingway, Hammett and Early Men’s Cookbooks," Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts, San Antonio, 2010.
"Reducing Women: Gender, Race, and Class in Post-Bellum Dieting Advice," Reading the Everyday: Literary and Cultural Perspectives, Paderborn, 2009.
"Queer Appetites, Butch Cooking," Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2009.
"Reducing Women: Politics and Power in Early Diet Discourses," inaugural Patrick Clendenen Conference, Washington, D.C., 2008.
"Beauty and the Feast: Diet and the Female Body in American Popular Culture," Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies, Dortmund, 2005.
"Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein," Another Language – Contemporary U.S. Poetic Experiments in a Changing World, Bochum, 2005.
"'Date with a Dish' - Kochen und Konstruktion von Männlichkeit in den USA der 30er und 40er Jahre" [Cooking and the Construction of Masculinity in the USA of the 1930s and 40s], BOND: Junior American Studies Scholars Conference, Dortmund, 2004.
"Sexuality und Gender als Analysekategorien in den
Kulturwissenschaften" [Sexuality and Gender as Categories of Analysis in Cultural Studies], Keynote, Annual Meeting of the National Gay Men's Student Union, Göttingen, 2003.
"Viral Discourse and Cultural Infection: Alejandro Morales' Rag Doll Plagues," Representations of Chicana/o Culture(s): Images, Texts, Products, Potsdam, 2002.
"Körper auf Rezept: Widerstand und Selbstbehauptung in Texten amerikanischer Autorinnen" [Recipes for Bodies: Resistance and Self-Presentation in American Women's Texts], Gender and Women's Studies Colloquium, Potsdam, 2001.
Chairing, Commenting and Organizing Panels
Organizer, "Vampire Narratives and American Society," Chesapeake American Studies Association, 2012.
Chair, "Performing and Placing Sexualities," Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2012.
Commentator, "Travel and Transformation: Global Perspectives on American Religious Cultures," American Studies Association, Baltimore, 2011.
Moderator, "In and Out of the Coffin: Queerness in Contemporary Vampire Fiction," Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2011.
Chair, "Language, Politics, Embodiment," Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2010.
Discussant, "Remapping Communities & Rethinking Politics," Reinstating Transgression: Emerging Political Economies of Queer Space, Washington, D.C., 2010.
Chair, "Migration, Science, Technology," American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 2009.
Discussant, "New Directions in Queer Excavations," Lavender Languages & Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2008.
Invited Lectures
“Essen, Kochen, Erinnern—Kochbuecher als historische
11.10.2014 KATHARINA VESTER 5
Dokumente” [Eating, Cooking, Remembering—Cookbooks as Historical Documents], Museum fuer Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Dortmund, 2014.
"Stirring the Melting Pot: Jüdische Identität in amerikanischen Kochbüchern," [Jewish Identity in American Cookbooks], Ludwig- Maximilian University Munich, 2011.
"Men in Aprons: Abenteurer, Verführer und Großwildjäger in der amerikanischen Küche" [Adventurers, Womanizers and Big Game Hunters in the American Kitchen], American Food Cultures Lecture Series, Carl-Schurz-Haus Freiburg, 2010.
"'I Yam What I Am': Food, Power and Identity in African American Cookbooks," Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2009.
"The History of Homosexuality," Queer Studies Lecture Series, Universität Essen, 2006.
"The Invention of Homosexuality," Gay Studies Lecture Series, Ruhr- Universität Bochum, 2006.
"The NCNW Cookbooks: Food, Resistance and New Models of African American Identity," Graduate Colloquium, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2006.
"Male Warbrides, musizierende Transvestiten und Metrosexuality: Die Herstellung von Heterosexualität als hegemonialer Diskurs" [Musical Transvestites and Metrosexuality: The Production of Heterosexuality as Hegemonic Discourse], Queer Studies Lecture Series, Universität Duisburg, 2004.
"American Masculinities," Cultural Studies Lecture Cycle, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2004.
"Jewish Immigrant Culture and Literature," American Studies Lecture Cycle, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2004.
"'That's Amore' - Die Pizza in der amerikanischen Kultur" [Pizza in American Culture], Universität Dortmund, 2003.
"Postmodernism," Cultural Studies Lecture Cycle, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2002.
TEACHING RESPONSIBILITIES
Classes designed and taught
American University, Washington, D.C.
"Interpreting American Culture," senior seminar, 2012, 2014.
"Food, Media and Culture," undergraduate course, 2011, 2013, 2014. "Blood and Desire: Vampire Narratives and American Society,"
undergraduate seminar, 2011, 2013.
"The Corset of Democracy: The Political Economy of Beauty Norms in U.S.
Cultural History," graduate and undergraduate lecture course, 2011. "Disciplined Subjects: Cultural Constructions of the Modern Body," senior
seminar, 2010, 2011.
"Beauty Myths: Identity, Politics, and Body Ideals," undergraduate course,
2009.
"Food, Identity and Politics: A Taste of Power," undergraduate course, 2008,
2010.
"American Dreams, American Lives," undergraduate course, 2007, 2008, 2009.
Universität Dortmund (language of instruction: English)
11.10.2014 KATHARINA VESTER 6
"The Corset of Democracy: The Politics of Fashion and Body Ideals in the 19th-Century United States," graduate seminar, summer session, 2009.
the 20th Century," seminar, 2007.
"The Ethnic Sleuth: Race and Ethnicity in American Detective Stories,"
seminar, 2008.
"The Politics of 'Passing': Subverting Race, Class and Gender in American
Literature and Culture," seminar, 2006.
"Queer Theory," graduate seminar, 2006.
"Beyond the Melting Pot: Food and the Invention of American Identities,"
seminar, 2006.
"The Grand Tour: American Travelers Writing Europe," seminar, 2006. "Skin Deep – Beauty, Bodies, and Business in 19th Century American
Culture," seminar, 2005.
"Yellow Peril, Red Scare, War on Terror – Discourses of Fear in American
Politics and Culture," seminar, 2005.
"'Demanding the Impossible'- Utopian Thought in American Literature,"
seminar, 2005.
"Constructing the Norm: 'Masculinity' and 'Whiteness,'" graduate seminar,
2004.
"American Expatriates in Paris," seminar, 2004.
"Jewish Immigrant Culture and Literature in the USA," seminar, 2003. "Introduction to Cultural Studies," seminar, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006. "The Female Sleuth in the Contemporary American Detective Novel,"
seminar, 2003.
"The Making of Chicana Poetics," seminar, 2003. "Academic Essay Writing," seminar, 2002.
Universität Potsdam
"Food, Identity and Politics," graduate seminar, summer session, 2008.
Ruhr-Universität Bochum (language of instruction: English)
"Food, Identity and Politics: A Taste of Power," undergraduate seminar, summer session, 2008.
"Miss America, Cosmetic Surgery and Weight Watchers: American Beauty in
"Introduction to Literary Studies," discussion section, 2000. "Gender and Aesthetics," undergraduate seminar, 1999. "Introduction to Literary Theory," discussion section, 1998.
CONFERENCE ORGANIZING
Bavarian America Academy Summer School. International cooperation with prestigious, state-funded German institution devoted to creating
scholarly transatlantic networks between young scholars of the U.S.
and Germany, sponsored by CAS, 2012.
CHASA. Organized annual meeting of the Chesapeake American Studies
Association, sponsored by CAS, 2012.
American Studies Day. Inaugural meeting of young American Studies
scholars at American University, 2010, 2011.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien (DGFA). Organized annual meeting
of national German American Studies Association for 2007.
Another Language – Contemporary U.S. Poetic Experiments in a Changing World. Organized international conference of senior scholars and poets, 2005.
11.10.2014 KATHARINA VESTER 7
BOND. Founded and organized annual colloquium of junior American Studies scholars in the Ruhr valley, 2003-06.
MEDIA APPEARANCES
AU Media
“Food Education Nation,” by Gregg Sangillio, American University website, October 2013 (article on food studies at AU).
"Fat Cats, Body Builders, and Corsets," by Sarah Stankorb, American Magazine, August 2011 (article on my research).
"America’s Yo-Yo Diet: How Culture Rules Waistline," by Sarah Stankorb, American Magazine website, August 2011 (interview).
"The Undead Come Alive in New Vampire History Class," by Paige Jones, The Eagle, April 7, 2011 (short article on my teaching).
Other Media
BackStory: “Beach Bodies: A History of the American Physique,” NPR 8/5/2012 (interview).
MEMBERSHIPS
IASA (International American Studies Association)
EAAS (European Association for American Studies—Women’s Caucus
Member)
DGfA (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien—Women’s Caucus Member)
OTHER WORK EXPERIENCE
Radio journalist, 1990-1996. RIAS Berlin, RS 2, Journalistenbüro Berlin, and BB-Radio Potsdam. Reporter, news editor, anchor, program manager, and editor-in-chief.
Print journalist, 1990-1991. Prinz Berlin (city magazine), arts editor.
LANGUAGE
German English
Spanish Latin Greek
native speaker.
professional fluency with published translations (German- English and English-German).
passed language exam for Latin American Studies in 2000. earned "Großes Latinum" state certificate.
earned "Graecum" state certificate for ancient Greek.
About Katharina Vester:
Katharina Vester
vester@american.edu
Katharina Vester is Associate Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. Her book, A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities, published in November 2015 by the University of California Press, is an investigation of the crucial role played by food discourses and culinary practices in the formation of cultural identity and power relations in American history. Food writing, she argues, has helped to make normative claims about citizenship, gender behavior, class privilege, race, ethnicity, and sexual deviancy, while promising an increase in cultural capital and social mobility to those who comply with the prescribed norms. Her article “Regime Change: Gender, Class, and the Invention of Dieting in Post-Bellum America” in the Journal of Social History won the Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence. Vester is the editor, with Kornelia Freitag, of Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America.
Articles by the author:
“Love Your Amazing Body”: Empowerment and Discipline in Celebrity Advice
Posted on February 1, 2017 by Katharina Vester
In spring 2016 Cameron Diaz published The Longevity Book, the long-awaited sequel to The Body Book, a number-one bestseller in 2014. In her books the Hollywood star promises healthier, more fulfilled lives and more beautiful selves to those who follow her guidance. Diaz’s publications are recent additions to a growing corpus of advice literature published by actresses claiming expertise over the female body. Often this advice comes wrapped in a language of empowerment. In The Body Book, Diaz writes: “…nutrition and fitness…are not just words they are tools. They are power. They are ways to care for yourself that empower you to be stronger…and truer to yourself” (2). “Love Your Amazing Body,” the book’s back cover exhorts its readers. The…
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Posted in Politics of Beauty, Politics of Health , Tagged advice, aerobics, body weight, discipline, fitness, gender, neoliberalism, resistance, slimness , Leave a comment
Katharina Vester is Assistant Professor of History at American University in Washington, DC, where she teaches in the American Studies program.
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Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies. A Taste of Power examines culinary writing and practices as forces for the production of social order and, at the same time, points of cultural resistance. Culinary writing has helped shape dominant ideas of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that eating right is a gateway to becoming an American, a good citizen, an ideal man, or a perfect wife and mother.
In this brilliant interdisciplinary work, Katharina Vester examines how cookbooks became a way for women to participate in nation-building before they had access to the vote or public office, for Americans to distinguish themselves from Europeans, for middle-class authors to assert their class privileges, for men to claim superiority over women in the kitchen, and for lesbian authors to insert themselves into the heteronormative economy of culinary culture. A Taste of Power engages in close reading of a wide variety of sources and genres to uncover the intersections of food, politics, and privilege in American culture.
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Print Marked Items
A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities
Robin O'Sullivan
Agricultural History.
91.1 (Winter 2017): p103. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
O'Sullivan, Robin. "A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities." Agricultural History, vol. 91, no. 1,
2017, p. 103+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479831339&it=r&asid=eeb357fa541a3f295543684fd4afe356. Accessed 14 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479831339
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Vester, Katharina: A taste of power: food and American identities
M.E. Birk
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1512. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Birk, M.E. "Vester, Katharina: A taste of power: food and American identities." CHOICE: Current Reviews for
Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1512. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942855&it=r&asid=e0fd3aaf4e3893ad3016a2e3e0c274c5. Accessed 14 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942855
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A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities
Caroline Rosenthal
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. (May 2016): From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Rosenthal, Caroline. "A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities." H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences
Online, 2016. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460952865&it=r&asid=86d9e08068c91d985ea5e8eb556aaa3b. Accessed 14 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460952865
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Discussion published by Patrick Cox, H-Net Vice President for Networks on Wednesday, June 1, 2016 0 Replies
Here's a review of Katharina Vester's A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities that was published by our colleagues over on H-Soz-u-Kult. Please note the review was originally written in German. The text below has been through Good Translate which, well, so shaky that almost considered not bothering to share this. But I think much of the meaning gets through about a pretty interesting book I imagine many here are familiar with.
You can follow this link http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47027 to the original or read the review below.
K. Vester: A Taste of Power
Katharina Vesters book deals with the symbolic implications of food in American culture. As its title suggests apparent she is primarily about social power structures, which manifest themselves in and through Essordnungen. The food, the basic thesis of the book, makes us certain subjects. Food discourses invite us to see ourselves as male or female, as heterosexual or homosexual, as American or British subjects. Vester engages in its analysis on a variety of sources: on cookbooks and cooking columns in magazines, on home economics books on literary texts, but also to other media such as TV cooking shows or blogs as well as on Still Life Painting.
In the introduction, the author identifies the theoretical godfather of her work: "This book owes its underlying understanding of how American culture employed food discourses in the production of subjectivities to the theoretical frameworks of Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, and, most prominently Michel Foucault." (p.5) From Foucault borrowed Vester especially the assumption that national and gender identities are discursively written and competitive and there is hegemonic as oppositional knowledge discourses. Elias' theoretical work allows her to look at the social impact of the food. Click to eating etiquette about defining class affiliations as well as certain dishes indicators for regional and ethnicity are.Bourdieu is called to determine the cultural capital of food because of the habit of eating and Essordnungen inherent, creates differences. Recipes and instructions for preparation and consumption of food as equip the subject from a cultural competence, which marks the belonging to a social group.
In the first analysis section, " 'For all degree of Life: The Making of a Republican Cuisine" Vester arises the question of how the semiotization of food has affected in the early American Republic on the formation of national subjects. From the American Revolution to 1840, formed in New England a "republican cuisine" (p.11) out that deliberately demarcated from European values. While these were associated with decadence and British imperialism, the new American cuisine virtuous simplicity made it their own as genuine markers of American identity. The simple kitchen was equated with health, moderation, humility, discipline and self-control, with values that went on to become the pillars of an American democratic identity. Although these "republican cuisine" is gerierte as the Americas, it was so Vester, by no means free of exclusion mechanisms, but disguised this ball.For Vester established itself as a white American middle class, the concept itself as unlabelled standard and the New England claimed as hegemonic identity to other regions and ethnic groups of the United States. From the 1820s joined the neuengländischen food discourse cooking practices that favored either regional or exotic cosmopolitan sophistication that contradicted the republican simplicity.
The second analysis chapter, " 'Wolf in chief's Clothing': Manly Cooking and Negotiations of Ideal Masculinity" to constructions of masculinity devotes related to food. This experiment investigates the period of 1890-1970 in cookbooks and literature. During the 19th century women an expertise in cookbooks acquired, pushed from the 20th century books on the market, the "manly cooking" propagated and were vehemently depose against the suspicion of effeminacy and feminization. Vester impressively shows, as recourse to established images and symbolism of masculinity for this, such as in the "lonesome cowboy" of his campfire flapjacks and beans cooked, or the "hardboiled detective" whose masculinity shows among other things that he lives alone of liverwurst breads. In the 1950s and 1960s, the symbolic construction of Gourmet men was a place in the kitchen, which set them apart from women, because of the simple everyday kitchen of the women he was something exotic, of genius and mystery oppose. Men's magazines such as Esquire or Playboy tried also to masculinizing the private sphere. Hosted by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner TV show "Playboy's Penthouse" (1959-1960) as established the "kitchenless kitchen", cooked in the men in the living room on a chafing dish over a flame and so remote from the female connoted sphere of kitchen ,
Similar to the first chapter Vester wants this hegemonic discourse of the white male middle class layer oppose other discourses. They investigated to cookbooks African American men from the 1960s, the black middle class established by the appropriation of "southern soul food". Dishes and ingredients such as pork offal that were formerly associated with slavery, poverty and provincialism südstaatlicher were, by "racial pride" (p.129) newly semiotisiert and socially acceptable.
In the final analysis chapter, " 'The Difference is Spreading': Recipes for Lesbian Living", the relationship between food and sexuality is examined, especially as lesbian women to enroll in cooking discourses. The prelude Gertrude Stein's text "Tender Buttons" from 1914, the female authority referring back to domestic and cookbooks manufactures and also calls into question by the set there standards being undermined in favor of another "economy of desire". Also publish Steins partner 1954 "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" undermined loud Vester the heteronormativity of cookbooks, so cooking for Vester to trope of difference (p 139). While lesbian cookbooks in the 20th century often recipes with autobiographical stories of coming out linked or sexual self-discovery, this tendency is in the 21st century in favor of affirmative pleasurable cooking of women with and for each other. In addition, such as in the TV show "Cooking with Lesbians" undermine expectations of cooking and femininity as well as homosexuality and deliberately parodied.
Vesters book is a win for everyone, academics and laymen who are interested in the literary, social, historical, anthropological or medial meanings of food. The low burden of theory work has the advantage that Vesters book is distinguished by a high readability. Nevertheless, the reader would have wished at some places more theoretical reflection. For example, what are the "American project" (p.3), "normative Masculinities" (p.14) or "hegemonic femininity (p.66)? Judith Butler would here quite can be mentioned briefly, as Louis Althusser or Antonio Gramsci, to make the formation of the subject in hegemonic discourses and the subversion thereof better understood. Because often appear the other discourses that summarized in chapter one and two and the hegemonic opposed, not as a counter-discourse, but simply as those that existed at the same time, but enrolled in any way in the hegemonic discourse of the white middle class.
The study would also have won by a clearer focus only on sex and food. The strongest and most mature chapter of the study is the second chapter to masculinity and food. Here it is possible Vester recourse to food practices in the early 20th century to convincingly show that masculinity is not stated in contrast to "boyhood" (p 104), but to femininity. The studied cookbooks are full of misogyny and sexism, to leave only not effeminate or even appear homoerotic interested the cooking man. show many of the featured recipes from the 1950s about how man cooked his way to the way to bed a woman. The third chapter is the least common, but it presents interesting new sources and treading new ground. In a first search motion, more than a coherent analysis, Vester feel here profitably by stories, strategies, images and symbolism, which oppose a heterosexual norm and about the representation and the consumption of food another desire and another sexualized body into the culture enroll.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2015
Katharina Vester's "A Taste of Power"
Katharina Vester is Assistant Professor of History at American University in Washington, DC, where she teaches in the American Studies program.
She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities, and reported the following:
Page 99 of A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities introduces one of my favorite examples in the book--Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. The 1930s hard-boiled detective novel may not be a text one expects to find in a monograph exploring the identity-producing significance of food. But I use The Falcon to show how the food prepared here reflects the changes in conceptualizing ideal masculinity between the Wars, namely as opposite to an empowered femininity that is imagined as emasculating and potentially deadly (the femme fatale). Only by preparing their own (manly) food could men, as many texts at this time claimed, avoid corruption of their masculinity. The food women cooked for men was potentially dangerous as it was not only dainty, but also thought to be fraught with manipulative emotion. A real guy, therefore, had to cook for himself to stay safe. Much can be learned, I claim, by watching Sam Spade making liverwurst sandwiches.
In many ways, this example is paradigmatic for A Taste of Power. It shows how ideas about food encase ideas about gender and identity in general. Page 99 is at the core of the part in the book that discusses gender and specifically masculinity, as the link between masculinity and food has been traditionally underexplored. In the other two parts of the book I look at early attempts at creating a national identity by imagining an American cuisine shortly after the American Revolution. The final part discusses sexuality and especially homosexuality and the representation of food in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
I enjoyed pulling together the most diverse materials dealing with food--from still lifes to YouTube cooking shows—to make my analysis. When read against each other, these sources present a novel entryway into the understanding of social structure in the past. Some of these texts are long forgotten and unknown today, some of them iconic and famous, but they all show how the representation of food is always also a representation of how identity is conceptualized and power is structured in society.