Harvard Food+ Research Symposium: What Does Joyce Chaplin Reveal About American Food History?

TL;DR

Joyce Chaplin argues that food history reveals America’s material origins, including the hunger and scarcity obscured by its image as a land of plenty. Jane’s cannibalized remains from Jamestown’s starving winter of 1609–1610 corroborate eyewitness accounts of survival cannibalism. Chaplin also explains how food illuminates culture, class, and gender. Read on to see why historians are reconsidering its place in the American past.

Transcript

greetings to all if i were there with you this is what i'd look like roughly podium stage and lighting depending but enough about me meet jane no jane is not her real name nor is she in very good shape but she is after all 400 years old she probably looked like this in her lifetime just before she died in the struggling english colony at jamestown ... Read More

Key Insights

• ❓ Jane's remains from Jamestown validate accounts of survival cannibalism and challenge prior dismissals.
• 😋 Historians' initial hesitation to include food history in their analysis was driven by a fear of material determinism.
• 😋 Food history is more than culinary history; it serves as an essential tool for understanding culture, class, and gender.
• 😋 America's perception as a land of plenty has deterred the study of food history, but recent scholarship highlights the prevalence of hunger and scarcity.
• 😋 Academic historians are increasingly accepting the significance of food history and its ability to unveil America's material origins.
• 😋 Food scarcity-related history plays a crucial role in understanding early America and the theories of Thomas Robert Malthus.
• 😋 Food history can bridge the sciences and humanities, contributing to a comprehensive re-examination of the human record.

Questions & Answers

Q: What does Joyce Chaplin argue about American food history at the Harvard Food+ Research Symposium?

Chaplin argues that food is one of the best indicators of America’s material origins. Its presence or absence has been a critical reality throughout colonial and United States history, revealing scarcity, abundance, culture, class, and gender.

Q: What did Jane’s remains reveal about cannibalism at Jamestown?

Jane’s remains showed that she was cannibalized after death during Jamestown’s starving time. Her fellow colonists hacked open her skull, removed her brain, sliced parts from her face, and reburied her, corroborating eyewitness accounts that some scholars had dismissed as propaganda.

Q: Who was Jane, and when did she die?

Jane was the name given to a female colonist who died at Jamestown, Virginia, during the terrible winter of 1609–1610. She may have died from lack of food, and her remains were about 400 years old when discussed by Chaplin.

Q: Why was food history long marginalized by academic historians?

Chaplin identifies three reasons: concern about being labeled material determinists, the perception that culinary history was frivolous, and the belief that America had always been a land of plenty. These assumptions encouraged historians to prioritize ideological origins and overlook food as a serious subject.

Q: How can food history help explain culture, class, and gender?

Food history extends beyond the study of cuisines, restaurants, and luxury consumption. Chaplin describes it as a powerful analytical tool for examining cultural preferences, class distinctions, and gender, while noting its strong intersections with women’s history and gender studies.

Q: Why does Chaplin challenge the idea that America was always a land of plenty?

She argues that many people went hungry in the past, even outside crises as severe as Jamestown’s starving time. She also says that periods of abundance should prompt the question, “plenty for whom?”

Q: How does Thomas Robert Malthus connect to Chaplin’s research on food scarcity?

Chaplin and Allison Bashford co-authored The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus. They argue that the Americas, Australia, and Pacific islands supplied central evidence for, and helped constitute, Malthus’s theory that humans could reproduce faster than food could be produced for them.

Q: How does Joyce Chaplin teach and advance food history at Harvard?

Chaplin participates in the Harvard Initiative on the Science of the Human Past, which combines questions and techniques from the sciences and humanities to re-examine the human record. She also teaches the undergraduate course American Food: A Global History, organized around scarcity and abundance, and planned to add the question of how the past tasted.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Jane, a 400-year-old female colonist from Jamestown, was cannibalized after death during the starving winter of 1609-1610.

• Historians have been hesitant to include food history in their analysis, prioritizing ideology over material origins.

• The perception of food history as frivolous is changing as scholars recognize its significance in understanding culture, class, and gender.