Deborah R. Geis

In this book, Deborah Geis offers a new approach to the evolving genre of culinary films that center on the acts of eating and cooking through close analyses of ten different films. These films range from the classics, like Big Night (1996) and Babette’s Feast (1987) to later box-office hits, like Chef (2014) and to films that deserve a second look, like East Side Sushi (2014), Burnt (2015), and Mid-August Lunch (2008). Throughout these analyses, the book focuses on tropes including the “big dinner” as it connects to intercultural and transcultural communities; the self-destructive perfectionism of the obsessive chef; and the craft of cooking in relation to aging and mortality. Geis invites readers and viewers to experience food-driven narrative films with an appetite for appreciating the visual ingredients and the ways in which they construct pleasure through the act of looking as a vicarious approach to consuming the actual food. Drawing on the work of film theorist Christian Metz, Geis ultimately poses a new paradigm for watching and understanding culinary cinema as a significant – and constantly-evolving – genre that comes with its own conventions and contemporary filmmakers who seek to expand and transform those conventions in surprising ways.

Whether perusing a recipe or learning what a literary character eats, readers approach a text differently when reading about food. Read My Plate: The Literature of Food explores what narrators and characters (in fiction, in performance, and in the popular genre of the “food memoir”) cook and eat. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the inmates of the Terezin concentration camp, performance artist Karen Finley, novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and the celebrated chef-turned-travel-journalist Anthony Bourdain are just a few examples of the writers whose works are discussed. Close readings of the literal and figurative “plates” in these texts allow a unique form of intimate access to the speakers’ feelings and memories and helps readers to understand more about how the dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and social class affect what the narrators/characters eat, from tourtière to collard greens to a school lunch bento box.

Whether perusing a recipe or learning what a literary character eats, readers approach a text differently when reading about food. Read My Plate: The Literature of Food explores what narrators and characters (in fiction, in performance, and in the popular genre of the “food memoir”) cook and eat. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the inmates of the Terezin concentration camp, performance artist Karen Finley, novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and the celebrated chef-turned-travel-journalist Anthony Bourdain are just a few examples of the writers whose works are discussed. Close readings of the literal and figurative “plates” in these texts allow a unique form of intimate access to the speakers’ feelings and memories and helps readers to understand more about how the dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and social class affect what the narrators/characters eat, from tourtière to collard greens to a school lunch bento box.

Praise for playwright Suzan-Lori Parks:"Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced."---Tony Kushner"[Parks's] stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous."---TimeSuzan-Lori Parks is one of America's most distinctive playwrights. In 2007 her creation 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in more than seven hundred theaters around the world. She has been named one of Time magazine's "100 Innovators for the Next New Wave" and is a recipient of the MacArthur Award. A former student of James Baldwin, Parks is a prolific author with novels, screenplays, and even a musical to her credit, but she is best known for her plays. Works such as Topdog/Underdog, In the Blood, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, and The America Play have been widely produced and have won the highest honors (including the Pulitzer Prize and two Obies), but to date, books on Parks have been scarce.The latest addition to the Michigan Modern Dramatists series offers an indispensable guide to Parks's dramatic works, taking a close look at her major plays and placing them in context. Deborah R. Geis traces the evolution of Parks's art from her earliest experimental pieces to the hugely popular Topdog/Underdog to her wide-ranging forays into fiction, music, and film.Deborah R. Geis is Associate Professor of English at DePauw University. Her books include Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American Drama; Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America (coedited with Steven F. Kruger); and Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust.

Praise for playwright Suzan-Lori Parks:"Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced."---Tony Kushner"[Parks's] stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous."---TimeSuzan-Lori Parks is one of America's most distinctive playwrights. In 2007 her creation 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in more than seven hundred theaters around the world. She has been named one of Time magazine's "100 Innovators for the Next New Wave" and is a recipient of the MacArthur Award. A former student of James Baldwin, Parks is a prolific author with novels, screenplays, and even a musical to her credit, but she is best known for her plays. Works such as Topdog/Underdog, In the Blood, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, and The America Play have been widely produced and have won the highest honors (including the Pulitzer Prize and two Obies), but to date, books on Parks have been scarce.The latest addition to the Michigan Modern Dramatists series offers an indispensable guide to Parks's dramatic works, taking a close look at her major plays and placing them in context. Deborah R. Geis traces the evolution of Parks's art from her earliest experimental pieces to the hugely popular Topdog/Underdog to her wide-ranging forays into fiction, music, and film.Deborah R. Geis is Associate Professor of English at DePauw University. Her books include Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American Drama; Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America (coedited with Steven F. Kruger); and Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust.