Colloquium Archive
Eileen Schell
Name: Eileen Schell, Syracuse University
Presentation Title: "The Year of the Locavore: The Rhetoric of the Local Food Movement"
Date: February 7, 2008
Abstract
In this presentation, I analyze the rhetorical claims of the U.S. local food movement as manifested in two high-profile books by investigative journalist Michael Pollan "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" and novelist Barbara Kingsolver "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life." Drawing on environmental rhetoric and critical literacy studies, I examine how Pollan and Kingsolver intervene in public discourses about food aesthetics, economics, ethics, and politics. In particular, I focus on how Pollan and Kingsolver promote a local food literacy even as the class politics in their books remain largely unexamined.