Utopian Visions of Food

Part of this year’s Missouri Humanities Symposium, Sustenance and Sustainability, at Drury University. I will provide an historical overview of utopian foodways. The talk highlights dreams individuals and communities have shared about food. From dreams of Edenic abundance to the contemporary explosion of urban gardens, people through the centuries have centered their lives upon desires to eat better. What “better” means varies from person to person and group to group: having plenty, having healthy habits, eating with others, or eating less.

This presentation draws from Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias as well as my “Food” essay in The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures (2022).

The talk is free and open to the public. Registration is requested (required for streaming the presentation).