In 1989 the University of North Carolina Press published a massive, one-volume Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, the first of, and the model for, the encyclopedias on the cultures and histories of several American regions that teams of scholars and writers have since offered to the public. Eighteen years after the original edition, the Press has released a new edition of the Encyclopedia, which, like its predecessor, is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
Unlike its predecessor, however, the 2007 edition is published in 24 separate volumes that give greater scope and coverage to a variety of topics (agriculture, environment, folklife, gender, language, race, and social class, to name a few). Available in cloth or paper, they are designed and marketed to be attractive to the individual reader with specific interests as well as to the libraries that will purchase the entire set. The Foodways volume, edited by John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, is the seventh in the group.
This volume goes well beyond the sixteen essays on food subjects that were spread throughout the “History and Manners” section of the first edition to include thirty brief essays on Southern foodways topics (foods, events, places, particular regionally and culturally defined cuisines, and the connections of food to other dimensions of culture, such as music, religion, and social class) and 118 still shorter essays on particular foods, food traditions, and people. Brief bibliographies at the end of all the essays offer well-chosen directions for further learning. Front matter and an essay introducing major themes in Southern foodways precede these entries, and an index of the eighty-nine contributors--scholars from a number of fields, journalists and food writers, and others involved in the range of farm-to-table food businesses--and a subject index follow them.
This is an excellent introductory volume, quite well suited to courses on foodways or Southern regional culture. The essays are thoughtfully written and thorough, within the limited length the encyclopedia format requires. Befitting the breadth of the field and the wide extent of interest in food traditions, the authors write from many professional perspectives, and as such the volume demonstrates a number of useful approaches to the study of food in culture and can engage readers in several ways. The introductory essay, by Edge and Joe Gray Taylor of McNeese State University, offers a balancing and illuminating overview of the history and cultural significance of food throughout the region.
One organizational quibble: the logic behind the placement of entries into two groups (a characteristic of the first edition as well) is somewhat unclear--to my way of thinking, several entries in each list might as well have been in the other--and the volume would be a bit simpler to use if all the entries were presented in one alphabetic order instead of two.
Encyclopedias offer scholars an opportunity to reach audiences outside the academy, and this volume promises to be successful at that task. Southern foods and food traditions (or, at least, stereotypes of Southern foodways) are the most widely recognized of those of any American region. The 148 contributions to Foodways--on subjects as various as pork and Hispanic American foodways, Krispy Kreme donuts and cemetery cleaning, greens and community cookbooks--are likely to deepen readers’ understanding of the subjects they already know something about, to introduce them to something they’d never thought of, and to encourage them to learn more.
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[Review length: 571 words • Review posted on July 23, 2008]