February 21st
Dr. Sarah Walden (Baylor University Interdisciplinary Core) will present “Tasteful Domesticity: Women’s Rhetoric and the American Cookbook.” This talk discusses the role of cookbooks in the lives of American woman and American culture. In the 19th century women used cookbooks to publicly fulfill their domestic duties to teach and safeguard American character and virtue, and they accomplished this task by an evolving understanding of the rhetorical function of taste in American cookbooks and culture. This talk describes rhetorical approaches to studying cookbooks and examines two specific examples: the intellectual labor of the domestic science and cooking school movements, and the racial politics at work in cookbooks of the late 19th century. 