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A Fork in the Road: Cosmopolitanism, Cookbooks and Vietnamese Street Food

Friday, April 1, 2022

11:30 am - 1:00 pm

 This talk will examine how Vietnam is presented and marketed in overseas cookbooks and television programs, paying close attention to the ways Vietnam and Vietnamese cuisine are fashioned through visual images of “the street.” By examining the composition, publishing, and distribution of this transpacific culinary media, I ask what is gained in the rhetorical turn to “street food”? Who does it privilege? Examining these documents provides an opportunity to understand the uneven terrain of transnational culinary representation, while identifying the crafting of space as an underlying feature of food television and cookbooks-allowing for a critical assessment of the pleasures that we indulge in when reading, watching, and consuming them.