The University of Michigan
Institute for Research on Women and Gender
presents a lecture by Janice Longone:
“The Old Girl Network”: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
3:00 PM-4:30 PM
2239 Lane Hall
Published by women in nonprofit groups across the country, “charity cookbooks” have been produced since the 1860s, benefiting churches, schools, sororities, the homeless, and others in need. Janice Longone is the curator of American Culinary History at the University of Michigan Clements Library. In this talk, she’ll explore the roles that charity cookbooks played (and continue to play) in women’s empowerment.
Before mass media, communication, and transit, the first wave of the women’s movement was already active via the most ordinary of objects: the lowly cookbook. In this talk, Ms. Longone explores the politics just under every woman’s nose (and, often, behind many men’s backs!).
This lecture features cookbooks on many themes with an emphasis on female empowerment. Many of the compilers worked hard to published these books (with scant funding) in hopes of raising more women to the level they had already attained. The books demonstrate how women worked together to help themselves, other women, and the outside world.
University of Michigan
Lane Hall
204 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290
http://irwg.research.umich.edu
(734) 764-9537
For more information about the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive, see the Clements Library website.
“The Old Girl Network”: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women was an exhibit curated by Janice Longone at the Clements Library in 2008. A selection from that exhibit is available online.