A Fork in the Road: Cosmopolitanism, Cookbooks and Vietnamese Street Food
This
talk
will
examine
how
Vietnam
is
presented
and
marketed
in
overseas
cookbooks
and
television
programs,
paying
close
attention
to
the
ways
Vietnam
and
Vietnamese
cuisine
are
fashioned
through
visual
images
of
“the
street.”
By
examining
the
composition,
publishing,
and
distribution
of
this
transpacific
culinary
media,
I
ask
what
is
gained
in
the
rhetorical
turn
to
“street
food”?
Who
does
it
privilege?
Examining
these
documents
provides
an
opportunity
to
understand
the
uneven
terrain
of
transnational
culinary
representation,
while
identifying
the
crafting
of
space
as
an
underlying
feature
of
food
television
and
cookbooks-allowing
for
a
critical
assessment
of
the
pleasures
that
we
indulge
in
when
reading,
watching,
and
consuming
them.
