Subject Guide
Helpful URLs
- Ask a LibrarianQuestions? Ask us! Chat, call, text, or email anytime.
- Interlibrary LoanNeed a book or article we don't own? Request a copy through Interlibrary Loan borrowing.
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- Using Databases Off GroundsHave questions about accessing databases from off-grounds? Find more information here.
BrowZine
Preparing for Research
Once you have a general topic in mind for your paper, spend some time thinking about how you will conduct your research:
- Fine-tune your searches.
Think broadly when brainstorming search terms - what synonyms or related terms could stand in for your key search terms?
You can combine search terms using AND (food AND literature) and OR (bugs OR insects).
In many databases, the asterisk (*) is a truncation or "wildcard" symbol that will match all possible endings for a word stem. For example, sex* will match sexism, sexual, sexuality, sexualize, etc.
Most databases have filters or facets that allow you to narrow your results by subject, date range, etc. Limit your searches to help you find the sources you need. - Think about where you might find the type of information you are seeking.
Will you find the research you need in a book? An article? A newspaper? A documentary? An interview? Cast a wide net when looking for the types of resources that could help answer your research question or support an argument you are making. - Know the difference between academic and non-academic sources, and when it's appropriate to use them.
Most databases allow you to limit results to academic/scholarly/peer-reviewed sources. Be mindful of your assignment and what you're being asked to provide. - When you find a good source, use it to find other good sources.
Use the subject terms and keywords associated with an item to find other items on similar topics.
Scholarly books and articles will have works cited, bibliographies, or footnotes you can mine for additional resources.
Need help? Ask a librarian.
Finding articles
Academic Search Complete is a large general database of articles from scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers on many topics. Updated daily, it can be the best source for resources about very current topics.
ProQuest offers UVa faculty, staff, and students access to 35 separate databases, covering numerous fields from the hard sciences to social sciences, as well as newspapers, government records, and statistical data.
JSTOR includes older issues of scholarly journals, from the start to 3-5 years ago.
Hospitality & Tourism Complete Includes journals, newsletters, industry reports, and some books covering topics such as culinary arts, development & investment, food & beverage management, hospitality law, hotel management & administrative practices, leisure & business travel.
Humanities International Complete Indexes over 2000 journals with full text for over 700 and for books and other publications. Topics covered include archaeology, art, dance, drama, ethnic and women's studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, poetry, religion.
Health Source: Consumer Edition Magazines, pamphlets and reference books covering a wide range of health topics. Includes a drug guide and a medical dictionary.
Agricola Locate articles, books, tech reports, software, patents, etc. about agriculture and related life sciences including food and nutrition.
Oxford English Dictionary
Includes definitions for most of the words in the English language but also information on their origins and quotations showing their range of meanings from the time they entered the language to the present.
Finding books & articles using Virgo
Virgo, the U.Va. Library’s primary search tool, contains catalog records for books, print journals, DVDs, maps, and digitized materials, as well as links to online articles from our rich array of subscription journals. You can search catalog materials and articles together, or view those results separately, using the facets provided to limit your results by author, format, publication period, and more.
Sample searches:
- Choose "Catalog only" search
- Search for michael pollan; and
- Select Pollan, Michael from the Author facet to find books written by the author; OR
- Select Food Habits from the Subject facet if you want books about food habits; OR
- Select Ebook from the Format facet to limit to books are available online; OR
- Select Fine Arts from the Library facet to find books housed in the Fine Arts Library.
Possible Books of Interest
1900 Ingredients: A Classic Reference Encyclopedia of World Foods by Call Number: Brown Library TX349 .I54 2007ISBN: 9781844764600Publication Date: 2007Each entry in this guide to the cooking ingredients of the world includes a detailed description of the varieties, appearance, flavour and aroma of the ingredient and offers advice on its preparation and culinary uses. There are also illustrated step-by-step instructions for more complex techniques.
The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising by Call Number: Clemons Reference HF5803 .A38 2003 v.1-3ISBN: 1579581722Publication Date: 2003For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the The "Advertising Age" Encyclopedia of Advertising website. Featuring nearly 600 extensively illustrated entries, The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising provides detailed historic surveys of the world's leading agencies and major advertisers, as well as brand and market histories; it also profiles the influential men and women in advertising, overviews advertising in the major countries of the world, covers important issues affecting the field, and discusses the key aspects of methodology, practice, strategy, and theory. Also includes a color insert.
Are We What We Eat? Food and Identity in Late Twentieth-Century American Ethnic Literature by Call Number: Clemons PS228 .P55 D35 2012ISBN: 9781604978018Publication Date: 2012"Over the last forty years, scenes that prominently feature acts of preparing and eating food have filled the pages of novels and memoirs written by American immigrants and their descendants because these writers understand that eating is more than a purely biological function but, instead, works to define who we are in the United States and abroad. Are We What We Eat? critically analyzes eight of these pieces of ethnic American literature, which demonstrate the important role that cooking and eating play in the process of identity formation. With the growing scholarly and popular interests in food and ethnicity in the United States, Are We What We Eat? is a timely analysis of food in literature and culture. To date, much of the scholarship on cooking and eating in ethnic American literature has focused on a specific ethnic group, but has not examined, in any in depth way, the similarities among the different ethnic and racial groups that comprise American culture. Are We What We Eat? presents a cross-cultural analysis that considers the common experiences among several ethnic cultures and, at the same time, recognizes the different ways that each culture was (and in some cases, still is) marginalized by the dominant American one. With analysis that is articulate and accessible to most, Are We What We Eat? will be an illuminating study for all who are interested in food, ethnicity, or gender in American culture."
The Cambridge World History of Food (2 vols) by Call Number: Brown Library Reference TX353 .C255 2000ISBN: 0521402166Publication Date: 2000An undertaking without parallel or precedent, this monumental two-volume work encapsulates much of what is known of the history of food and nutrition. It constitutes a vast and essential chapter in the history of human health and culture. Ranging from the eating habits of our prehistoric ancestors to food-related policy issues we face today, this work covers the full spectrum of foods that have been hunted, gathered, cultivated, and domesticated; their nutritional makeup and uses; and their impact on cultures and demography. It offers a geographical perspective on the history and culture of food and drink and takes up subjects from food fads, prejudices, and taboos to questions of food toxins, additives, labeling, and entitlements. It culminates in a dictionary that identifies and sketches out brief histories of plant foods mentioned in the text - over 1,000 in all - and additionally supplies thousands of common names and synonyms for those foods.
Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (3 vols) by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo. Or Clemons Reference GT2850.E53 2003ISBN: 0684805685Publication Date: 2002This new three-volume set presents 600 articles on food and its place in human culture and society, covering everything from agronomy to zucchini. Students, academics and general researchers will find entries on everything from food preparation, distribution and storage to holidays and festivals, nutrition and health, and cultures and cuisines. The "Encyclopedia's multidisciplinary articles--including "Comfort Food," "Ethnicity and Food," "Medieval Banquets" and "Nutrient Composition"--are supplemented by 450 photographs and illustrations, sidebars, recipes, menus, timelines and a comprehensive index.
Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present by Call Number: Ebook - Acces online using link in VirgoISBN: 023111155XPublication Date: 2013When did we first serve meals at regular hours? Why did we begin using individual plates and utensils to eat? When did "cuisine" become a concept and how did we come to judge food by its method of preparation, manner of consumption, and gastronomic merit? Food: A Culinary History explores culinary evolution and eating habits from prehistoric times to the present, offering surprising insights into our social and agricultural practices, religious beliefs, and most unreflected habits. The volume dispels myths such as the tale that Marco Polo brought pasta to Europe from China, that the original recipe for chocolate contained chili instead of sugar, and more. As it builds its history, the text also reveals the dietary rules of the ancient Hebrews, the contributions of Arabic cookery to European cuisine, the table etiquette of the Middle Ages, and the evolution of beverage styles in early America. It concludes with a discussion on the McDonaldization of food and growing popularity of foreign foods today.
A History of Food in Literature: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present by Call Number: Clemons PR149 .F66 B89 2017ISBN: 9780415840514Publication Date: 2017When novels, plays and poems refer to food, they are often doing much more than we might think. Recent critical thinking suggests that depictions of food in literary works can help to explain the complex relationship between the body, subjectivity and social structures. A History of Food in Literature provides a clear and comprehensive overview of significant episodes of food and its consumption in major canonical literary works from the medieval period to the twenty-first century. This volume contextualizes these works with reference to pertinent historical and cultural materials such as cookery books, diaries and guides to good health, in order to engage with the critical debate on food and literature and how ideas of food have developed over the centuries. Organised chronologically and examining certain key writers from every period, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens, this book's enlightening critical analysis makes it relevant for anyone interested in the study of food and literature.
The Immigrant Kitchen: Food, Ethnicity, and Diaspora by Call Number: Clemons GT2853 .U5 H35 2016ISBN: 9780814213001Publication Date: 2016In The Immigrant Kitchen: Food, Ethnicity, and Diaspora, Vivian Nun Halloran examines food memoirs by immigrants and their descendants and reveals how their treatment of food deeply embeds concerns about immigrant identity in the United States. Halloran argues that by offering a glimpse into the authors' domestic lives through discussions of homemade food, these memoirs demystify the processes of immigration, assimilation, acculturation, and expatriation--ultimately examining what it means to live as naturalized citizens of the United States. Having grown up hearing about their parents' often fraught experiences of immigration, these authors examine the emotional toll these stories took and how such stories continue to affect their view of themselves as Americans. Halloran covers a wide swathe of immigrant food memoirs, moving seamlessly between works by authors such as Austin Clarke, Madhur Jaffrey, Kim Sunée, Diana Abu-Jaber, Eduardo Machado, Colette Rossant, Maya Angelou, and Jonathan Safran Foer. The Immigrant Kitchen describes how these memoirs function as a complex and engaging mass media genre that caters to multiple reading constituencies. Specifically, they entertain readers with personal anecdotes and recollections, teach new culinary skills through recipes, share insight into different cultural mores through ethnographic and reportorial discussions of life in other countries, and attest to the impact that an individual's legal immigration into the United States continues to have down through the generations of his or her American-born families.
The Oxford Companion to Food by Call Number: Brown Library Reference TX349 .D38 1999ISBN: 0192115790Publication Date: 1999Twenty years in the making, here is the long-awaited magnum opus from one of the world's great authorities on the history and use of food. This Companion is packed with 2,650 delightfully written A-Z entries--including 39 feature articles on staple foods--the vast majority penned by the renowned Alan Davidson, with additional articles by over fifty specialists from as far afield as the Philippines, Norway, and Australia. The coverage is spectacular, with the most wide-ranging treatment ever of foods and food products and how to use them. Indeed, the Companion covers everything--plant products, meats, birds and eggs, dairy products, nuts, fish and all seafoods, plant foods, cereals, and exotic foods. Davidson examines famous dishes from around the world--from cassoulet, croque-monsieur, and couscous, to spam, sherbet, and sonofabitch stew. There are over 140 entries on national and regional cuisines (Cajun cooking, Pennsylvania Dutch). Even Antarctica is included in this unique panorama. Other subjects covered in depth include food preservation, culinary terms and techniques, food science and diet, cookbooks and their authors, and the role of food in culture and religion. The book is enhanced by some 180 exquisite illustrations of foods by Laotian artist Soun Vannithone, ranging from the comfortingly familiar to the bizarre and rare. In fact, the common and the exotic mingle throughout, with the everyday (apples, apricots) and the exotic (akee, ambarella, baobab) found side by side. Here then is a true cornucopia, offering all the flavors, styles, and staples of the world, past and present, from classical Greek and Roman cookery to modern Australian and Hawaiian cuisines. Food historians, food scientists, food writers, chefs, restaurateurs, amateur cooks, and everyone with a serious interest in cooking--and eating--will feast on this authoritative reference on food.
