Katharina Vester | American University (original) (raw)
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Katharina Vester
Approaching Transnational America in Performance. Eds. Pia Wiegmink and Birgit Bauridl. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016
The Journal of Popular Culture, 2015
The Contested and the Poetic: Gender and the Body. Ed. Amanda Stone, 35-44.
In: Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop: Rethinking African American Foodways from Slavery to Obama., Ed. Jennifer Wallach. 47-60.
Transnational American Studies, Jun 2012
Journal of Social History, Jan 1, 2010
"Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations th... more "Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations that see dieting as a practice established in the 1920s to control women at a time when they gained suffrage and greater economic independence. This article offers an alternative reading, arguing that diet advice literature arrived in the US in the 1860s and originally targeted a male, white, middle-class audience. While the hegemonic beauty ideal for the female body was at its heftiest, men started to build muscle and reduce weight. The ideal of the slender male body was associated with white superiority, social mobility and the national ambition for an American empire. When white middle-class women eventually started dieting in greater numbers in the 1890s, it was because they claimed the same mastery over their bodies as men—and demanded the same privileges as their male peers over immigrants, African Americans and working-class people, who were increasingly imagined as overweight. Revising the history of dieting to show its origins as a masculine practice appropriated by women to stake a claim to class and race privilege invites a rethinking of power and resistance in the disciplining of the female body.
Queers in American Popular Culture, Oct 2010
Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and …, Jan 1, 2009
Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein Katharina Veste... more Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein Katharina Vester When Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas returned for a visit to the United States in 1934, The New York Times was intrigued by two observations: the clarity of Stein's ...
Negotiating Diversity: Aspects of Identity in Anglophone Culture, 2003
Edited Books by Katharina Vester
Monographs by Katharina Vester
Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role ... more Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies. A Taste of Power examines culinary writing and practices as forces for the production of social order and, at the same time, points of cultural resistance. Culinary writing has helped shape dominant ideas of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that eating right is a gateway to becoming an American, a good citizen, an ideal man, or a perfect wife and mother.
In this brilliant interdisciplinary work, Katharina Vester examines how cookbooks became a way for women to participate in nation-building before they had access to the vote or public office, for Americans to distinguish themselves from Europeans, for middle-class authors to assert their class privileges, for men to claim superiority over women in the kitchen, and for lesbian authors to insert themselves into the heteronormative economy of culinary culture. A Taste of Power engages in close reading of a wide variety of sources and genres to uncover the intersections of food, politics, and privilege in American culture.
Papers by Katharina Vester
Kämpfe um Migrationspolitik, 2014
»Es ist der niederträchtigste Befehl, den ich je ausgeführt habe. Ich konnte nicht mehr schlafen ... more »Es ist der niederträchtigste Befehl, den ich je ausgeführt habe. Ich konnte nicht mehr schlafen bei dem bloßen Gedanken an diese Unglückseligen. Nachdem sie mitbekommen hatten, dass sie nach Libyen zurückgebracht werden, haben sie uns zugerufen: ›Brüder, helft uns!‹ Aber wir konnten nichts machen, die Befehle lauteten, sie nach Libyen zurückzubringen, und das haben wir getan. Ich werde meinen Kindern nicht erzählen, was ich gemacht habe, ich schäme mich dafür.« (La Repubblica vom 9.5.2009, Übers. d. Verf.) Mit diesen Worten schilderte ein Polizist der Guardia di Finanza 1 eine See-Operation der italienischen Polizeikräfte, die im Mai 2009 in internationalen Gewässern stattfand. 2 Insgesamt 231 Migrant_innen gerieten in der Nacht vom 6. auf den 7. Mai bei ihrer Überfahrt von Libyen nach Italien in Seenot und wurden von Schiffen des italienischen Grenzschutzes an Bord genommen. Die Migrant_innen wurden in dem Glauben gelassen, sie befänden sich auf dem Weg zur 35 Meilen entfernten italienischen Insel Lampedusa; stattdessen verschiffte man sie nach Tripolis. Sie wurden von den italienischen Grenzschützern weder nach ihrem Namen gefragt, noch nach ihrer Herkunft oder 1 | Die Guardia di Finanza ist eine italienische, militärisch organisierte Polizeitruppe, die für die Bekämpfung von Wirtschaftskriminalität sowie die Überwachung der Zollgrenzen zuständig ist. 2 | Die Chronologie des Falles basiert auf zwei Artikeln der Verfasser_innen (vgl. Pichl/ Vester 2012a und 2012b). Eine Film-Dokumentation über den Fall erschien im Jahr 2012: Die italienischen Dokumentarfilmer Stefano Liberti und Andrea Segre haben für ihren Film Mare Chiuso (Closed Sea) Menschen interviewt, die von den Zurückweisungsoperationen des italienischen Militärs betroffen waren, vgl. http://marechiuso.blogspot.de (letzter Aufruf aller Internetquellen am 28.3.2013).
Choice Reviews Online, May 24, 2016
University of California Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2019
transcript Verlag eBooks, Jul 28, 2022
English and American Studies in German, Oct 15, 2010
the collection into an equally fraught encounter with the confl icts around truth and fi ction on... more the collection into an equally fraught encounter with the confl icts around truth and fi ction on the web with their essay, “Controlled Demolitions: The 9/11 Truth Movement on the Internet”. They trace the outlines and internal dynamics of saving fi ctions which have sprung up in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, as purportedly factual formats are used to develop and further conspiracy theory driven narratives of what “really” happened on and before that day.
University of California Press eBooks, Oct 2, 2015
University of California Press eBooks, Oct 2, 2015
The Journal of Popular Culture, Feb 1, 2015
marketed to a female audience, have taken a big bite out of the market for crime novels. 1 Cozy m... more marketed to a female audience, have taken a big bite out of the market for crime novels. 1 Cozy mysteries developed out of the classic English detective story and, unlike the hard-boiled crime novel, avoid gruesome depictions of violence, gore, and sex. Instead they focus on the puzzle the crime presents and how it can be solved, based on the belief that the world is ruled by causality and can be deciphered through reasoning (Malmgren 13-31). The light-hearted texts commonly feature a female amateur sleuth who lives, works, and loves in a tightly knit, small-town community in which everything is in order save the occasional murder upon which the protagonist happens to stumble. 2 The female sleuth is often depicted as nosy, more interested in good relationships and romance than in her career, and more concerned about her family and friends than about herself. All in all, cozy mysteries would be an unlikely place to find cultural resistance or the renegotiation of gender norms, were it not for the representation of bodies-not the dead ones, but the living ones. Cozies feature sleuths who come in a range of body shapes, sometimes outside dominant beauty norms. Diane Mott Davidson describes her sleuth as "pudgy" (Catering to Nobody 4), Kathryn Lilley calls her character "plus-sized" (back cover), Selma Eichler speaks of hers as "queen-size" ("Books"), Virgina Rich's Mrs. Potter describes herself as "fat" (53), and G.A. McKevett's Savannah Reid is "a big, sexy southern sleuth" (Bitter Sweets back cover)-to give only a few examples for this underresearched phenomenon of overweight, voluptuous, and regular-sized pop culture heroines targeting a mass market. Cozy mysteries also discuss beauty and dieting practices in innovative and often critical ways, thus encouraging women to disobey or at least to become aware of the pressure hegemonic beauty ideals place on them. Many of the protagonists despise diets and enjoy good food in hearty quantities, while avoiding workouts and other forms of exercise, generally enjoying their bodies as they are. In this way, cozy mysteries create a utopian space in which fictional women who do not fulfill hegemonic beauty standards can overcome weight-bias, live successful lives, outwit thin and conventionally pretty female villains, and fight back against the cultural dictum of self-surveillance and self-improvement. The cozy mystery therefore serves as an example of how popular culture can provide space for the successful negotiation of beauty norms. Although in the last three decades feminist thought has tentatively embraced popular culture as a site in which users can observe and try out alternative gender performances
University of California Press eBooks, Oct 2, 2015
Approaching Transnational America in Performance. Eds. Pia Wiegmink and Birgit Bauridl. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016
The Journal of Popular Culture, 2015
The Contested and the Poetic: Gender and the Body. Ed. Amanda Stone, 35-44.
In: Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop: Rethinking African American Foodways from Slavery to Obama., Ed. Jennifer Wallach. 47-60.
Transnational American Studies, Jun 2012
Journal of Social History, Jan 1, 2010
"Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations th... more "Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations that see dieting as a practice established in the 1920s to control women at a time when they gained suffrage and greater economic independence. This article offers an alternative reading, arguing that diet advice literature arrived in the US in the 1860s and originally targeted a male, white, middle-class audience. While the hegemonic beauty ideal for the female body was at its heftiest, men started to build muscle and reduce weight. The ideal of the slender male body was associated with white superiority, social mobility and the national ambition for an American empire. When white middle-class women eventually started dieting in greater numbers in the 1890s, it was because they claimed the same mastery over their bodies as men—and demanded the same privileges as their male peers over immigrants, African Americans and working-class people, who were increasingly imagined as overweight. Revising the history of dieting to show its origins as a masculine practice appropriated by women to stake a claim to class and race privilege invites a rethinking of power and resistance in the disciplining of the female body.
Queers in American Popular Culture, Oct 2010
Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and …, Jan 1, 2009
Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein Katharina Veste... more Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein Katharina Vester When Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas returned for a visit to the United States in 1934, The New York Times was intrigued by two observations: the clarity of Stein's ...
Negotiating Diversity: Aspects of Identity in Anglophone Culture, 2003
Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role ... more Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies. A Taste of Power examines culinary writing and practices as forces for the production of social order and, at the same time, points of cultural resistance. Culinary writing has helped shape dominant ideas of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that eating right is a gateway to becoming an American, a good citizen, an ideal man, or a perfect wife and mother.
In this brilliant interdisciplinary work, Katharina Vester examines how cookbooks became a way for women to participate in nation-building before they had access to the vote or public office, for Americans to distinguish themselves from Europeans, for middle-class authors to assert their class privileges, for men to claim superiority over women in the kitchen, and for lesbian authors to insert themselves into the heteronormative economy of culinary culture. A Taste of Power engages in close reading of a wide variety of sources and genres to uncover the intersections of food, politics, and privilege in American culture.
Kämpfe um Migrationspolitik, 2014
»Es ist der niederträchtigste Befehl, den ich je ausgeführt habe. Ich konnte nicht mehr schlafen ... more »Es ist der niederträchtigste Befehl, den ich je ausgeführt habe. Ich konnte nicht mehr schlafen bei dem bloßen Gedanken an diese Unglückseligen. Nachdem sie mitbekommen hatten, dass sie nach Libyen zurückgebracht werden, haben sie uns zugerufen: ›Brüder, helft uns!‹ Aber wir konnten nichts machen, die Befehle lauteten, sie nach Libyen zurückzubringen, und das haben wir getan. Ich werde meinen Kindern nicht erzählen, was ich gemacht habe, ich schäme mich dafür.« (La Repubblica vom 9.5.2009, Übers. d. Verf.) Mit diesen Worten schilderte ein Polizist der Guardia di Finanza 1 eine See-Operation der italienischen Polizeikräfte, die im Mai 2009 in internationalen Gewässern stattfand. 2 Insgesamt 231 Migrant_innen gerieten in der Nacht vom 6. auf den 7. Mai bei ihrer Überfahrt von Libyen nach Italien in Seenot und wurden von Schiffen des italienischen Grenzschutzes an Bord genommen. Die Migrant_innen wurden in dem Glauben gelassen, sie befänden sich auf dem Weg zur 35 Meilen entfernten italienischen Insel Lampedusa; stattdessen verschiffte man sie nach Tripolis. Sie wurden von den italienischen Grenzschützern weder nach ihrem Namen gefragt, noch nach ihrer Herkunft oder 1 | Die Guardia di Finanza ist eine italienische, militärisch organisierte Polizeitruppe, die für die Bekämpfung von Wirtschaftskriminalität sowie die Überwachung der Zollgrenzen zuständig ist. 2 | Die Chronologie des Falles basiert auf zwei Artikeln der Verfasser_innen (vgl. Pichl/ Vester 2012a und 2012b). Eine Film-Dokumentation über den Fall erschien im Jahr 2012: Die italienischen Dokumentarfilmer Stefano Liberti und Andrea Segre haben für ihren Film Mare Chiuso (Closed Sea) Menschen interviewt, die von den Zurückweisungsoperationen des italienischen Militärs betroffen waren, vgl. http://marechiuso.blogspot.de (letzter Aufruf aller Internetquellen am 28.3.2013).
Choice Reviews Online, May 24, 2016
University of California Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2019
transcript Verlag eBooks, Jul 28, 2022
English and American Studies in German, Oct 15, 2010
the collection into an equally fraught encounter with the confl icts around truth and fi ction on... more the collection into an equally fraught encounter with the confl icts around truth and fi ction on the web with their essay, “Controlled Demolitions: The 9/11 Truth Movement on the Internet”. They trace the outlines and internal dynamics of saving fi ctions which have sprung up in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, as purportedly factual formats are used to develop and further conspiracy theory driven narratives of what “really” happened on and before that day.
University of California Press eBooks, Oct 2, 2015
University of California Press eBooks, Oct 2, 2015
The Journal of Popular Culture, Feb 1, 2015
marketed to a female audience, have taken a big bite out of the market for crime novels. 1 Cozy m... more marketed to a female audience, have taken a big bite out of the market for crime novels. 1 Cozy mysteries developed out of the classic English detective story and, unlike the hard-boiled crime novel, avoid gruesome depictions of violence, gore, and sex. Instead they focus on the puzzle the crime presents and how it can be solved, based on the belief that the world is ruled by causality and can be deciphered through reasoning (Malmgren 13-31). The light-hearted texts commonly feature a female amateur sleuth who lives, works, and loves in a tightly knit, small-town community in which everything is in order save the occasional murder upon which the protagonist happens to stumble. 2 The female sleuth is often depicted as nosy, more interested in good relationships and romance than in her career, and more concerned about her family and friends than about herself. All in all, cozy mysteries would be an unlikely place to find cultural resistance or the renegotiation of gender norms, were it not for the representation of bodies-not the dead ones, but the living ones. Cozies feature sleuths who come in a range of body shapes, sometimes outside dominant beauty norms. Diane Mott Davidson describes her sleuth as "pudgy" (Catering to Nobody 4), Kathryn Lilley calls her character "plus-sized" (back cover), Selma Eichler speaks of hers as "queen-size" ("Books"), Virgina Rich's Mrs. Potter describes herself as "fat" (53), and G.A. McKevett's Savannah Reid is "a big, sexy southern sleuth" (Bitter Sweets back cover)-to give only a few examples for this underresearched phenomenon of overweight, voluptuous, and regular-sized pop culture heroines targeting a mass market. Cozy mysteries also discuss beauty and dieting practices in innovative and often critical ways, thus encouraging women to disobey or at least to become aware of the pressure hegemonic beauty ideals place on them. Many of the protagonists despise diets and enjoy good food in hearty quantities, while avoiding workouts and other forms of exercise, generally enjoying their bodies as they are. In this way, cozy mysteries create a utopian space in which fictional women who do not fulfill hegemonic beauty standards can overcome weight-bias, live successful lives, outwit thin and conventionally pretty female villains, and fight back against the cultural dictum of self-surveillance and self-improvement. The cozy mystery therefore serves as an example of how popular culture can provide space for the successful negotiation of beauty norms. Although in the last three decades feminist thought has tentatively embraced popular culture as a site in which users can observe and try out alternative gender performances
University of California Press eBooks, Oct 2, 2015
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 19, 2020
The American Historical Review, Apr 1, 2019
