- This event has passed.
History Hour: Appalachia on the Table
May 9, 2023 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Join the Asheville Museum of History Tuesday, May 9 at 6pm via Zoom for the first program in our foodways month. This event airs live and will be recorded.
In this talk Erica Abrams Locklear will discuss her new book, Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People, published this April by University of Georgia Press. At its core, the project asks: How do long-held preconceptions about Appalachian foodways color our perception of the region and its people? Foods that were once considered “coarse” are now trendy, while a fairly rigid idea of what “counts” as mountain food remains stagnant.
Abrams Locklear will discuss how socially agreed upon understandings of food can and do define its consumers in the national imagination. Her book analyzes travel writing and fiction from the turn of the twentieth century, tactics Progressive Era reformers used when describing mountain fare, fictional critiques of government programs meant to educate farmers, literary depictions of the culinary shame that can accompany mountain eating habits, and the ways in which authors celebrate mountain fare.
About the Speaker:
Erica Abrams Locklear is a professor of English and the Thomas Howerton Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of North Carolina Asheville. She is the author of Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women’s Literacies and is a seventh-generation Western North Carolinian.
Tickets: $5 for members/ $10 for General Admission. We also have no-cost, community-funded tickets available. We want our events to be accessible to as many people as possible. If you are able please consider making a donation along with your ticket purchase. These donations are placed in our Community Fund, which allows us to offer tickets at no cost to those who would not be able to attend otherwise.
*Registrants will receive a discount code with which to pre-order this book*
Viewing: Registrants will receive a Zoom link with which to view the program. It will also be recorded and later available on our website.
