Date of Award
Summer 8-2024
Document Type
Master's Project
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Humanities
Committee Director
Anne Muraoka
Committee Member
Elizabeth Zanoni
Abstract
Koláče in the Blogosphere is an analysis of food blogs to determine how female food bloggers cultivate food expertise through domesticity, femininity, and ethnicity. Their readership are predominately the adult children and grandchildren of immigrants seeking rediscovery of lost recipes or the completion of partial recipes of loved ones that have passed on. The bloggers are typically recent immigrants themselves or native writers in their home countries sharing recipes with those seeking rediscovery. Gender and food studies scholars have studied women as guardians of domesticity, ethnicity, the world of ethnic cuisine, and food authenticity along with the matrilineal transmission of ethnic culture and cuisine in domestic settings. It was not until late in the last century that it became acceptable for descendants of European immigrants to explore and celebrate their ethnic heritage. This paper uses koláče and their close cousins koláčky and kolachi as lenses for examining expressions of domesticity, ethnicity, femininity, and food authenticity in food blogs. It analyzes a selection of food blogs with primarily female authors of central and eastern European ethnicity or heritage with posts on koláče, koláčky, or kolachi as sources for what they reveal about these concepts and about the food blog as a medium for creating, expressing, and reinforcing identity. This paper argues that female bloggers can obtain guardian or gatekeeper status through their careful presentation of koláče within its traditional setting, curating for their readers sources of difficult to procure items and maintaining an aura of welcoming and warm domesticity and femininity
Rights
Copyright © 2024, Cathryn Janka
Recommended Citation
Janka, Cathryn. "“Koláče in the Blogosphere: Cultivating Food Expertise through Domesticity, Femininity, and Ethnicity”" (2024). Master of Arts (MA), Master's Project, Humanities, Old Dominion University, https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/humanities_masters_papers/5
Included in
Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Food Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
Comments
A Project Submitted to the Faculty of Old Dominion University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS.