Food Studies Friday @ the Farm

Church Cookbooks and Victorian American Domesticity Speaker: Emily Bailey, Ph.D. student in the Cooperative Doctoral Program in Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Victorian era in the United States saw significant changes in the social, domestic and religious roles of women. This period, from shortly after the Civil War until the First World War, marked a shift for women from traditional middle-class female responsibilities to more domestically challenging ones.

This study examines late Victorian Protestant church community cookbooks as moral and cultural guides written by women for women, documenting the domestic roles and Christian practices of women in the years before and after the turn of the twentieth century.

It also considers the influence of Protestant Christianity on expected female social roles as moral matriarchs. It then examines church community cookbooks as uniquely viable and valuable historical sources through which to better understand female Christian domestic practice in Victorian America.

Eleven American Protestant Christian cookbooks published from 1881 to 1913 serve as case studies throughout. These texts illuminate the late Victorian period through the words and recipes of the women who wrote them.

As domestic guides, the cookbooks present recipes for food and life in broader terms, and in particular, advertisements from the texts offer information about the connections between gender, domesticity and religion during the era.

Emily studies religious communities in America, gender in religion, food and religion, and domestic life and Protestant Christianity in 19th-century America.

Snacks and beverages will be provided.