Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Rohrbacher, David

Area of Concentration

Humanities

Abstract

There have been extensive discussions about food in literature, but very little has been done on restaurants in literature. The restaurant as an establishment is fairly new but it provides rich possibilities for artists to explore a uniquely diverse meeting place. This thesis explores what authors Bourdain, Hamilton, Pond, and O’Nan, and filmmakers Itami and Bird/Oswalt, have done with narratives in the restaurant setting. Restaurants within these texts are gendered settings in which growth, characters, and narratives develop around ideas of masculinity, art versus craft, types of cooking, and Bildungsroman. The restaurant is a productive site for exploring gender roles. As a space these restaurants allow for the challenging and exploration of gender through the gendered spaces of the front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house dynamics.

Download

Share

COinS