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Nicole Newell
CIS Senior Project
May 1, 2015
Professor Lagerquist
Annotated Bibliography
Primary Books
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to
Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Bynum examines the significance of food in the religious lives of medieval women.
Bynum’s key insight is that fasting was not an ascetic practice denying the body, but a
practice that capitalized on fleshiness and the ability to feel, through hunger, suffering
that connects one to the suffering Christ. Women, close to food preparation in their
everyday lives, used food as a particular way of communion with God, mediating the
divine.
Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Davis uses Old Testament texts and the writing of Wendell Berry to develop an agrarian
ethic of care for the land. She argues that the covenantal God of the Hebrew Bible cares
about the relationship of humanity to the soil; humans come from the soil and return to
the soil; God gives them stewardship of the land; jubilee practices involve Sabbaths of the
land itself, by letting fields lie fallow.
Day, Dorothy, and Robert Ellsberg. Dorothy Day, Selected Writings: By Little and by Little.
Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2005.
Dorothy Day, whose faith motivated a passion for social justice, started the Catholic
Worker movement. These writings document her personal journey and struggles in
starting the movement. Her philosophy was to give abundantly, even when there seemed
not to be enough.
Holmes, Seth M. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Seth Holmes, trained as both an anthropologist and a medical doctor, investigates the
suffering and violence experienced by Triqui migrant workers involved in the production
of food in the US. As an ethnographer, he uses his own bodily experiences crossing the
border and picking strawberries as part of his field notes. Holmes offers everyday human
stories as commentary and challenge to neoliberal policies and the commodification of
food. As a kind of public anthropology, this book gives view into the lives of people with
whom our everyday eating is unknowingly entwined.
Kingsolver, Barbara, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
Kingsolver and her family choose to eat almost entirely from the bounty of their own
garden for a year. In this adventure, she comes to greater appreciate seasonal foods and
the ways food preparation and eating bring her family together, connecting them to the
land.
Miles, Sara. Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.
For Sara Miles, left-wing lesbian, atheist, journalist and midlife convert to Christianity,
the Eucharist is her entrance to church and becomes the inspiration for a food shelf she
starts. God in this central meal “offers food without exception to the worthy and
unworthy, screwed-up and pious, and then commands everyone to do the same” (Miles,
xv-xvi). She describes her attempt to model such an ethic through the food shelf, set up
around the expensive altar at St. Gregory’s, where people come in a few at a time to
choose breads, vegetables, and other foods.
Wirzba, Norman. Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
Theologian Wirzba develops a Christian ethic of eating and cultivation, beginning with
the ecological insight that eating involves a cycle of life and death. He critiques modern
agricultural systems and their denial of the ‘memberships’ of creation – that we are all
interdependent, like members of one body. He also discusses Eucharistic ethics and the
practice of saying grace as habits of reverence for the origins and interdependences
implicated in our eating.
Secondary Books
Bateson, Mary Catherine. Peripheral Visions: Learning along the Way. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
An anthropologist, Mary Catherine Bateson reflects on her diverse cultural and
educational experiences to muse on how we learn our world. She examines those things
we take for granted as given, and argues that we are relational beings. She examines the
metaphors we use to see the Earth and imbues a perspective of constant, life-long learning
and improvisation.
Farrell, James J. “Food for Thought.” In The Nature of College: How a New Understanding
of Campus Life Can Change the World. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2010.
Farrell takes problematizes food practices that we consider natural and given by looking
at the range of where food comes from and where it goes. How we deal with food
production and food waste involve detrimental environmental impacts.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love. London: Bloomsbury,
2014.
Ask the Beasts explores the theological meaning of evolution in the Christian tradition
as the process for creating life and diversity on this planet. God creates a free, empowered
creation – free to explore its own possibilities and limits and empowered to make its own
choices. Johnson develops an understanding of deep incarnation, noting that the
molecules and atoms comprising Jesus’ body were formed long before his life and remain
today. Jesus’ resurrection means life anew not just for humans, but all creation. Humans,
uniquely aware of their place in the world and uniquely powerful in their effects on the
biosphere, have moral responsibilities to this place that is our home.
Lathrop, Gordon. Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
I focused on excerpts of Lathrop that had to do with the table and Easter, which he calls
Pascha. Bread and wine, sacred objects, communicate the love and grace of God. Jesus
draws upon old meanings and rituals and flavors them in new ways with new
juxtapositions.
Miller, Vincent J. Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture.
New York: Continuum, 2003.
Miller argues that we encounter religion as a commodity, as something to consume. This
mentality prevents religious values from penetrating our practices. There is not an
explicit ethic behind consumerism, which is born more out of ignorance and many
different influencing factors than any real value for exploitation of labor and resources.
Northcott, Michael S. A Political Theology of Climate Change. Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013.
Northcott, an ethicist, writes in a prophetic realm, interpreting climate change as a kind
of punishment for human wrongs against the land. Climate change demonstrates that
our political economy in late-capitalist society does not help us to take care of the gift of
land, nor does it recognize that the political is always grounded in the ecological.
Northcott proposes a political theology in which small communities organize themselves
around the common good and live closely connected to their local land.
Rasmussen, Larry L. Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013.
Larry Rasmussen, an environmental ethicist, writes a treatise on how religions influence
our dispositions toward the Earth, our home. He argues that religions provide a rich
resource for caring for the earth; such connections are not always made, but could
mobilize collective action and moral responsibility for the condition of Earth.
Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. New York:
HarperOne, 2009.
Brown offers personal insights on Christian belief through practices drawn from
everyday life and other religious traditions. This book provided another example of
reflective writing on the intersections of practice and belief, and how practices shape our
life and ways of thinking.
Articles
Bass, Dorothy C. “Eating.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited
by Bonnie J. McLemore, 51-60. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
In an anthology on Practical theology, Dorothy Bass looks at eating as a way to practice
one’s faith. At table, we learn “wisdom about equity and pleasure, virtues of gratitude,
temperance, patience, and generosity” (52). She looks at Jesus’ eating practices and the
anthropological meanings of eating in American society.
Barndt, Debra. “Whose ‘Choice’? ‘Flexible’ Women Workers in the Tomato Food Chain.”
In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 452-66.
2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Flexible labor practices lower costs for companies while giving ‘choice’ to workers. While
this may at first glance seem good for both parties, women who work flexible shifts are
structurally disadvantaged. Such labor practices allow companies to pay workers parttime without any benefits and disadvantage new workers. Odd hours disrupt the lives of
women and change their habitus; one woman no longer makes her own tortillas, but buys
them because of her job’s hours.
Barthes, Roland. "Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption." In
Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 28-35. 2nd
ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
In this article, Roland Barthes discusses the meanings of food as sign. While the subject of
food often connotes triviality or guilt as a subject of study, Barthes argues that it is a
functional unit as “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages,
situations, and behavior” (29). Barthes speaks of a grammar of foods, with syntax
(menu), style (diet), and meaning behind its functional units, the immediate physical
reality of the food itself.
Clapp, Jennifer. “The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of Agricultural
biotechnology” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van
Esterik, 539-53. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Food aid from ‘developed’ countries to ‘underdeveloped’ countries dealing with famine
and food scarcity tales advantage of food-scarce countries. Given the uncertain effects on
health and genetic crop drift of genetically modified crops, some countries wish not to
accept such donations of food aid. The US sends in-kind donations rather than monetary
aid, subsidizing its own food producers and taking away the choice of another country’s
government to accept genetically modified crops.
Clark, Dylan. “The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine.” In Food and Culture: A Reader,
edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 411-22. 2nd ed. New York:
Routledge, 1997.
Punks eat food that is identified by the broader culture as either raw or rotten—dumpster
diving, unsanitary food preparation, and sharing as a mode of resistance to white middle
class values. Thoroughly cooked food—cooked not just in the literal sense, but in the
processes of capitalism and a form of neocolonialism that brings us cheap food from
around the world—is purified through its designation as ‘rotten.’ Similarly, foods from
health and whole food stores also represent racial and class privilege. In stealing these
foods, punks purify them through the transgression.
de Certeau, Michel and Luce Giard. “The Nourishing Arts.” In Food and Culture: A
Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 67-77. 2nd ed. New York:
Routledge, 1997.
In this article, Giard wrestles with her feminine identity and association with all things
culinary. At first an activity she avoided in effort to not fall into gender norms, she finds
beauty in the practice: “Each invention is ephemeral, but the succession of meals and
days has a durable value” (76).
Douglas, Mary. “Deciphering a Meal.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole
Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 45-53. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Douglas maps out the structure of ancient Israelite dietary rules, recognizing a pattern
among the rules about denizens of the air, water, and land. Those creatures which cut
across each category are abominable. Douglas also recognizes a parallel in terms of what
can be sacrificed or consecrated at the temple between the Israelites under the covenant
and their livestock under the covenant. Meat is transformed from living creature to a food
through the ritual act of draining the blood, mimicking the bloody sacrifice to God at the
altar.
Fickenscher, Pamela. "From Catherine to Katniss: disordered eating, resistance, and the
Eucharist." Word & World 33, no. 4 (September 1, 2013): 357-366. ATLA Religion Database
with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed May 1, 2015).
Pam Fickenscher examines contemporary food practices in light of the Eucharist. She
speaks of holy communion as an act of resistance because it enacts “a way of eating
together that disrupts the way we usually gather around food: we all eat at the same
table; we eat only small amounts; everyone is invited; the body we eat is not one we kill,
but rather one who gives himself and yet never dies” (365). This enactment is a kind of
jubilee, a resistance to the culture of scarcity for the masses and excess for the few. In this
physical act, believers are called to go beyond intellectual assent to sharing fellowship
with those who are different.
Harris, Mavin. “The Abominable Pig.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole
Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 54-66. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
In this piece, Harris offers an alternative to Douglas’ explanation for the dietary rules of
the Israelites. He focuses on the environmental, ecological, and pragmatic aspects of the
rules and how they might have functional value with respect to what was good for the
particular semi-arid region and the sanitary practices at the time.
Hartman, Laura M. "Consuming Christ: the role of Jesus in Christian food ethics." Journal
Of The Society Of Christian Ethics 30, no. 1 (March 1, 2010): 45-62. ATLA Religion Database
with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed May 1, 2015).
Hartman examines feasting and fasting in light of Christ as a model for table practices
and as sustenance in the Eucharist. By fasting and feasting as Christ did, Christians may
embody and encounter him. Hartman identifies a justice function and an ethic of
‘enough’ in the sharing of the Eucharist.
Hess, Lisa Maguire. "Encountering habits of mind at table: Kashrut, Jews, and
Christians." Cross Currents 62, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 328-336. ATLA Religion Database
with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed May 1, 2015).
Hess is a Christian, and as a Lenten practice she chooses to follow the Jewish Kashrut
dietary laws. She finds great freedom and discipline in following the laws and partaking
in meals with a Jewish family, which she reflects upon here.
Judge, Rebecca P, and Charles Taliaferro. "Companionable bread." Word & World 33, no.
4 (September 1, 2013): 367-372. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost
(accessed May 1, 2015).
Judge and Taliferro offer an examination of the modern systems that produce bread, and
question whether U.S. trade and agricultural policies promote ‘companionship’ with
others or exercise a control that harms others. They argue that a biblical look gives no
definitive answers to these practical questions, but ask us to think deeply and critically
about how we construct our political and economic systems.
Meyer, Birgit. “Media and the Senses in the Making of Religious Experience: an
introduction” Material Religion 4, no. 3 (July, 2008): 124-35. Bloomsbury Journals.
Meyer argues that religion functions as and through media—stuff. Religious experiences
are mediated through the material, such as icons, the Eucharist, or bodily positions.
Meyer’s work provided me with a framework for understanding how religion functions
and the importance of material forms in people’s religious experience.
Mintz, Sidney W. “Time, Sugar, and Sweetness.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by
Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 91-103. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Mintz examines sugar as a case study of how history and anthropology help us
understand food in its shifting significatiosn. She investigates the meanings and
symbolisms imposed on raw materials such as sugar, as well as the systems that create
the raw materials themselves and any suffering, inequality, or oppression involved.
Poppendieck, Janet. “Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger to Inequality.” In Food and
Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 572-81. 2nd ed.
New York: Routledge, 1997.
Both liberals and conservatives focus too often on hunger as the problem, obscuring the
fact that hunger is a symptom of a larger problem of inequality. Fixing hunger is not a
matter of linking excess waste to people’s bodily needs, but of leveling out income
inequalities and redistributing privileges so that people may provide for themselves. Such
hunger programs and their advertising also obscure the need for a safety net like SNAP
benefits, for which hunger programs are only a supplement.
Schlosser, Eric. “The Chain Never Stops” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole
Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 441-51. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Schlosser describes practices in meat packing plants, detailing the history of how meat
packing jobs went from a high-level blue collar position to a low paid, pain inducing job
which takes advantage of migrant workers. Four companies hold 85% of the market
share, and are vertically integrated even to include their own medical care, creating
conditions in which worker’s rights suffer to the company’s profit.
Williams-Forson, Psyche. “More than Just the ‘Big Piece of Chicken’. The Power of Race,
Class, and Food in American Consciousness.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by
Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 342-53. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Williams-Forson analyzes the racial, power, and class meanings associated with fried
chicken as the favorite food of African-American men. She questions whether symbols
that involve oppression can be reappropriated by the oppressed.
Zimmerman, Joyce Ann. "Fasting as feasting." Liturgical Ministry 19, no. 2 (March 1,
2010): 72-77. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed May 1,
2015).
Zimmerman offers a three pronged view of the functions of fasting: being right with self,
with others, and with God. Fasting disciplines the self, but it is to be accompanied by
almsgiving, which orients the person toward the other, and prayer, which orients the soul
toward God.
Popular References
Barber, Dan. “Driven by Flavor.” On Being, radio podcast hosted by Krista Tippet.
American Public Media, August 21, 2014.
Barber, a renowned chef, shares his philosophy behind using locally grown foods
at his restaurants.
Davis, Ellen, and Wendell Berry. “The Poetry of Creatures.” On Being, radio podcast
hosted by Krista Tippet. American Public Media, November 24, 2011.
Davis talks extensively on the ethics of our life with creation and the biblical stories that
she interprets as exhorting us to take good care of the land. Berry’s poems are peppered
throughout the interview.
Fields, Leslie Leyland. "A feast fit for the King: returning the growing fields and kitchen
table to God." Christianity Today 54, no. 11 (November 1, 2010): 22-28. ATLA Religion
Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed May 1, 2015).
Leyland writes for evangelical ears, focusing on the glory of God and critiquing food
movements as a kind of theology or religion focused on purity, legalism, and selfrighteousness. In my opinion, her critique of the food movement might actually serve to
affirm mindless eating habits in churches and justify viewing mindfulness about food as a
kind of legalism. She does not make a great case for why Christians ought to eat radically
differently. However, she does view Jesus as one who would partake in the lime green jello
and cheese doodles at the church dinner; accepting hospitality is an important ethic in
Jesus’ life, even (and perhaps especially!) if this involves something ‘dirty.’
Food, Faith, and Sustainability. Seattle, WA: Earth Ministry, 1997.
This collection of essays, prayers, and workshops provided a lens into how churches
might engage with the topic of food and theology. I found the essays insightful and used
some prayers in the liturgy of the feast.
Frykholm, Amy Johnson, and Jennifer Emmerling. "Feast day in Leadville." Christian
Century 127, no. 5 (March 9, 2010): 26-27. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials,
EBSCOhost (accessed May 1, 2015).
Mexican Americans in Leadville make a 3-mile pilgrimage for the feast day of the Virgin
of Guadalupe from the trailer park to the town center, melding traditional Aztec and
Catholic rituals and dress. Young people dance from morning until night, and one
woman is chosen to represent the Virgin. This pilgrimage is an act of courage, as
Leadville is very cold this time of year and many who participate are not legal American
citizens. Claiming their heritage is contentious in this setting.
Grumett, David. "A Christian diet: the case for food rules." Christian Century 127, no. 7
(April 6, 2010): 34-37. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed
May 1, 2015).
Muslims fast during Ramadan, Jews do not eat pork, but Christians have no food rules as
a symbol that Christ has set them free. But Christians ought to pay attention to what
they eat. Food choices express spiritual devotion, and can be a way for Christians to resist
networks of oppression by avoiding what is thought of as high-status food or food that
perpetuates inequality and suffering.
Kingsolver, Barbara. “The Ethics of Eating.” On Being, radio podcast hosted by Krista
Tippet. American Public Media, July 15, 2010.
Kingsolver gives insight into her year spent eating food grown by their family, and shares
about some of the aspects of eating that evoke spiritual responses.
Liturgical Resources
“Environmental Liturgy.” Anglican Diocese of Perth. Accessed April 20, 2015.
http://www.perth.anglican.org/liturgy/environment.
Here is a collection of several prayers and liturgical readings oriented toward the earth. I
used a couple of these prayers as a part of the feast.
Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Pew ed. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2006.
The prayers, liturgical settings, and hymns provided sources of reflection and
inspiration for me throughout the project.
Ramshaw, Gail. “An Earth Eucharistic Prayer” 2013.
A beautiful prayer that can be used in the blessing of the Eucharist. This prayer views the
cycling of life and death as part of the natural order in the world God made.
St. Lydia's - A Dinner Church and Co-Working Space in Brooklyn, New York. Accessed
March 4, 2015. http://stlydias.org.
St. Lydia’s dinner church provided inspiration and ideas for the feast I hosted. Their
website has many liturgical resources and references that were helpful.