Gastrocritical Reading Questions: A Heuristic Tool for Literary Food Studies Pedagogy

Description

Food Studies are an interdisciplinary field examining food in society from various angles, including history, sociology, anthropology, psychology and more, which has established itself since the 1990s. Literary scholars joined the field relatively late, in the past 15-20 years, notwithstanding earlier pioneers. Most scholars active in Food Studies have joined the field from their respective disciplines; however, there are also a small number of graduate programmes situated squarely in the interdisciplinary field, including the MA Gastronomy and Food Studies at TU Dublin, set up in 2017. The experience of teaching on this course has shown that it can be a disorienting experience for novice scholars/postgraduate students to conceptualise food scholarship across the disciplines, for example in a Literary Food Studies module that requires them to read food in literature. In order to faciliate my students and others in a similar position to apply their deep understanding of food in the context of literary scholarship, I have developed a heuristic tool, the Gastrocritical Reading Questions. A heuristic tool is a process or method that enables someone to discover something for themselves. The Gastrocritical Reading Questions (GCRQ) lead food scholars towards textual analysis, while in turn leading literary scholars towards a more nuanced appreciation of food scholarship. In this presentation, I explained the GCRQ as a pragmatic tool in Literary Food Studies pedagogy, as well as how they contribute to further developing the interdisciplinary field of Food Studies in terms of theory and method

Period	2 Oct 2025
Event title	Food and Drink as Education
Event type	Conference
Location	IrelandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International