The Edible Primary Source: Food as a Medium to Teach History
Steven Jenkins
Whether it is a book, a quote, a painting or a picture, students are meant to study history through and from these meanings. While they each have validity and all have importance, some of these sources lack the relatability needed to encourage engagement in a students mind. Primary sources can be static. Stuck in the time period they were written and while their implication and effects ripple into the present they remain stuck in the time they were made, orated or created. However, what if educators used living mediums to illustrate historical processes. That is a medium that is used physically by people in the past with continual uses today. That medium, as the title suggests, is food.
Food is somewhat of an easy to miss primary source. It is understandable of course because when comparing the constitution and a tomato, one packs an obvious greater historical punch. However, by considering primary sources as only a physical creation by a human who wrote, spoke or drew, the possibilities are limited. While the United States constitution has evolved beyond the bounds of the time it was created and has become the “living document” described in many classrooms today, so has the tomato. So has any food. This essay will demonstrate how food is a living document to be adopted in the classroom. Food can be used in the classroom as a method of showing historical change, a method of instilling culturally responsive education into the curriculum as well as being an applicable mode of analysis to any historical period.
Food history is first and foremost about a process. Food must be grown of course. It starts with a seed, the tending of young livestock, and reproduction for generations to provide for us. It is part of the story of humankind itself. The development of agriculture, that idea so central to understanding ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia or Egypt, has been neglected in education in post-Paleolithic age discussions. Humans have created the ability to grow their own sources of food and changed environments through irrigation, terraforming landscapes and breeding plants and animals for more desirable characteristics. Humans then harvest and process those items and create a dish using those ingredients. It is a quite profound process that still is practiced everyday whether the ingredients are sourced by the cook or not. More than that, humans have assigned meaning to our food. Humans have created cultures that have holidays that revolve around crop rotations and harvests. Humans have created dishes that are synonymous with certain cultures. People that come from the same ethnic or cultural background can share similarities beyond their geographical locations because of food. In the classroom, this is a pertinent example of the values that education wishes to attain generated through food.
Food in education is a necessary mode to encourage multicultural thought and culturally sensitive pedagogies. Each student comes from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. Honoring these is a great goal in education. As stated by Wiley-Blackwell about Culturally Responsive Teaching, “Culturally competent teachers are committed to learning about their students’ cultural resources, or funds of knowledge” (Wiley-Blackwell 1). Food history can facilitate this. Having students research, explore and learn about foods or dishes that are part of their culture allow them to critically engage with the history that has made their diverse identities. They bring their knowledge and combine it with historical records, thus, bringing their culture as a source of learning for the entire class and the teacher. They get to educate their classmates and teachers about themselves and their history.
Another issue that makes food history a great medium is its applicability. No matter the time period, individuals responded to the conditions of their time by changing their gastronomy. This can be represented in the classroom as evidence of the social changes that occur in various periods of history. For example, if a class is engaging in the topic of enslavement in America, food history can show the conditions of enslavement as well as perseverance of enslaved Africans. This can be done through okra. Okra, a crop originating in west Africa that has become synonymous with southern cooking in America, which has its roots in enslavement. Enslaved Africans taken from the continent brought with them okra seeds. Evidenced by the unfamiliarity with the crop by early European sources in Brazil, okra was seemingly foreign to them leading to the possibility that Africans resisted slavery by bringing okra seeds as contraband (Sousa & Raizad, 2020). Beyond that, okra was repeatedly described in the personal gardens of slaves and used as a form of medicine, syncretized religious practices as well as sustenance in the face of horrible malnutrition (Eisnach & Covey, 2019). In the post-civil war era, okra expanded outside of the plantations and became part of some of the first examples of enterprising formerly enslaved persons in the form of soul cooking. Some of the first sold cookbooks created by former slaves include okra in the form of gumbo and other dishes. One of those cookbooks is titled What Mrs. Fisher knows about old southern cooking, soups, pickles, preserves, etc. This cookbook describes various methods of cooking with okra gained from Fisher’s experiences as a former slave (Fisher, 1881). Fisher had essentially used the abject horror of slavery as a means of self-enterprise, exemplifying the importance of food culture for formerly enslaved persons. Okra became part of a series of navigations of enslaved africans against the institutions of slavery. From its arrival in America okra was a matter of resistance. This is a historical case that could be added to curricula to show the nature of life in enslavement as well as the agency of enslaved persons in the Americas.
There are plenty of other examples that could be listed out in which food can be used as a medium of examining historical periods however the importance is implementation in the classroom. The concept of food history can be used in countless ways. As described prior food is a process. A process that mirrors human growth and development. It informs the way people react to their social constraints. Those social constraints and events that form the unique cultures of each and every student in the classroom. Food history is an opportunity for culturally relevant pedagogies where students center food as a manner to present their identities. Food history is finally a manner of applicability. It is an aspect of the historical record that is forever present and forever important to the historical process for the individuals that experienced it. It is thus that teachers must examine food as a primary source in itself. A primary source that bends time to become a fountain of educational possibilities.
References
Eisnach, D., & Covey, H. (2019). Slave Gardens in the Antebellum South: The Resolve of a Tormented People. Southern Quarterly, 57(1), 11-23. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/slave-gardens-antebellum\-south-resolve-tormented/ docview/2553031701/se-2?accountid=10216.y
Fisher, A. & Katherine Golden Bitting Collection On Gastronomy. (1881) What Mrs. Fisher knows about old southern cooking, soups, pickles, preserves, etc. San Francisco: Women’s Co-operative Printing Office. Retrieved from the Library of Congress. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/08023680/.
Sousa, E., & Raizad, M. (2020). Contributions of African Crops to American Culture and Beyond: The Slave Trade and Other Journeys of Resilient Peoples and Crops. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 4. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.586340/full
Wiley-Blackwell. (2022) Multimodal Literacies: Fertile Ground for Equity, Inclusion, and Connection. Reading Teacher, 75(5), 603–609.
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