Language: English
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What if the syllabus were a menu?
What if learning began with a bite?
Edible Tales: Folklore, Myths, and Food Narratives in Higher Learning invites readers to the table, literally and intellectually, to explore how food stories shape knowledge, identity, ethics, and pedagogy. Structured as a twelve-course banquet, the book moves from forbidden fruits and mythic punishments to kitchen-table dialogues, classroom rituals, and contemporary visual art. Across chapters, contributors examine how food functions as law and transgression, nourishment and discipline, inheritance and invention. Eve’s bite, Persephone’s seeds, and Gretel’s breadcrumbs are reread as moments where appetite becomes agency. Thanksgiving disasters become narrative laboratories. Off-calendar feasts and midnight breakfasts reveal how everyday rituals sustain resilience in academic and communal life. Olive oil tastings, medieval banquets, pupusa-making, and jollof debates demonstrate how foodways encode histories of gender, class, colonialism, migration, and belonging.
Methodologically, Edible Tales blends scholarly analysis with creative forms: scripts, recipes, stage directions, audio guides, almanacs, and lesson “potions.” The volume models how folklore and food narratives can be mobilized in higher education classrooms as rigorous, embodied ways of knowing. Contributors show how storytelling, shared snacks, sensory memory, and digital food archives can foster trust, critical reflection, and ethical engagement, particularly in interdisciplinary, humanities-based, and social justice-oriented pedagogy.
Designed for scholars and educators in education, folklore, cultural studies, food studies, and the humanities, Edible Tales is also an invitation to instructors seeking innovative pedagogy, to students hungry for meaning, and to readers who believe that stories travel best when passed hand to hand. Come hungry. Leave with stories. Pack the leftovers as questions, and carry them into tomorrow.
Perfect for courses such as: Food Studies; Folklore and Mythology; Cultural Studies; Narrative Inquiry / Qualitative Research Methods; Curriculum Studies; Interdisciplinary Humanities; Anthropology of Food; Education and Social Justice; Gender, Culture, and Society; Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Edible Tales: An Opening Banquet
Chapter 1.
Forbidden Fruit and Fateful Feasts: Women, Hunger, and the Poetics of Punishment in Folklore
by Monika Hanley
Chapter 2.
“We Ate That Up!” A Kitchen Table Talk on Food, Pedagogy, and Black Feminist Praxis
by Olivia A. McNeill and Esther O. Ohito
Chapter 3.
Of Moonlight and Memory: Folk Healing, Lunar Recipes, and the Witch’s Spoon
by Alessandra Pino
Chapter 4.
Talking With Our Mouths Full: Foodways Narratives and Personal Meanings of Thanksgiving Dinner
by Lucy M. Long
Chapter 5.
Legacy of Culinary Magic on Low Heat: Off-Holidays and the Echo of Food Rituals
by Andrea Arce-Trigatti and Dorota Silber-Furman
Chapter 6.
Culinary Art: From Porcelain to Paper — The Legendary, a Contemporary Legend, and a Beauty and a Beast
by Kristin M. McAndrews
Chapter 7.
Salvi Foodways: Pláticas, Recipes, and Digital Intersections
by Elena Foulis and Jennifer Gómez Menjívar
Chapter 8.
Pedagogical Potions and Classrooms as Zones of Mysticism
by Charlene E. Holkenbrink-Monk
Chapter 9.
Athena’s Ambrosial Olive Tree of Knowledge: Cultivating Epic, Green & Epicurean Wisdom through Liquid Gold
by Maria Hnaraki
Chapter 10.
Feasting, Fellowship, and Arthurian Ideals: Dining in Medieval Courtly Literature
by Kyah C. Eichholz
Chapter 11.
Midunu: Commensality, Social Commentary, and Quotidian Aesthetics in Sedem Kingsley Dzade’s Paintings
by Sela Kodjo Adjei
Epilogue
Last Call
About the Authors
Index
NOTE: Table of Contents subject to change up until publication date.
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Reviews & Endorsements
Dr. Steve Daniel Przymus, The University of Rhode Island“In treating food as a social semiotic, Zhu and Morrison join a great tradition, alongside the likes of Roland Barthes, of pulling the curtain (or should I say the tablecloth) back on society’s relationship with food. Just as Barthes (1961) understood food to be a myth, “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior” (p. 21), this collection of edible tales leaves the reader convinced that food has always been a part of mythologies that create social scripts and concrete metaphors for understanding the abstract concepts of life. But more than metaphors, each contribution metonymically stands in place for a story that predates us all yet invites us to be modern-day characters in the narrative. Historians will remind us that food has facilitated and sustained all revolutions. This book is a revolution for needed radical and fundamental change in higher learning . . . and it is so tasty at the same time.”
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Dr. Dennis L. Rudnick, Metropolitan State University of Denver“Edible Tales is a feast for the mind. Zhu and Morrison have assembled a remarkable collection that transforms food from mere sustenance into a portal for exploring power, identity, and pedagogy. From Eve’s transgressive bite to Salvadoran pupusas as living syllabi, each chapter uncovers how myths and foodways shape who gets to learn, and who gets left hungry. Inventive, rigorous, and deeply human, this book doesn’t just belong in higher education; it belongs at every table where stories are taken seriously.”
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Dr. Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, Texas Woman’s University“Edible Tales is as brilliant as it is rich in flavor, offering something for every academic needing to fill an empty pit in their intellectual stomach. Each chapter feels healing and warm with generous storytelling and sprinkles of feminist pedagogy. You’ll start reading with a sense of hope, and you’ll finish reading with a sense of deep satisfaction. This book belongs on every foodie academic’s bookshelf.”
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Vlad Strukov, Professor of Film and Visual Culture, University of Leeds, and Visiting Professor of Contemporary Art and Curating, Ca-Foscari University, Venice“The volume changes our perception of what food can do. I strongly recommend this publication to those working on visual cultures, aesthetics and philosophies of art, practice and sociality.”
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Dr. Heidi S. Hakimi-Hood, Midwestern State University“Edible Tales is a must for any scholar, foodways enthusiast, or educator interested in an impactful study of food, memory, and pedagogy. This book combines equal parts theory, instruction, and folklore in order to entice readers into understanding how food delivers meaning in cultures, classrooms, artistic traditions, and storytelling. For readers interested in applying food studies in their own classes and scholarship, Edible Tales is invaluable as chapters bring to light food-inspired pedagogical practices supported by interdisciplinary research.”
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Amanda Hill, Dell DeHay Law Library“An innovative and diverse collection of twelve food narratives which transform the classroom into a fun and dynamic medium of learning. Each course is playful, yet structured. Inclusion of folklore, memory, and myths ground the stories in shared cultural experiences, inviting others to include their stories, and delve deeper into the meaning of culinary experiences through
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critical thought and discussion.”
Dr. Julia Haoran Ni, Columbus State University“An essential read that invites scholars, educators, and anyone interested in the transformative power of food stories.”
Dr. Joshua Held, Southeastern Oklahoma State University“The idea of Edible Tales is delicious. The prologue invites us to a 12-course meal. The chapters serve not the routine soup, salad, or even an enticing amuse-bouche but instead a variety of pragmatic dishes like “Plate as Politics” or “Potions for Classrooms.” The editors have assembled an intriguing cornucopia.”
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