Project Question: How have Vietnamese and French cultures combined to create the modern day food practices and etiquette in Vietnam?
Our purpose:
Our interactive multimodal website invites viewers to grapple with the culinary and etiquette shifts that paralleled the changing power structures during the colonial period as well as their effects on cuisine in the present day. We have included analysis of images related to food acquisition, preparation, and meal sharing practices that are found in the Technique du Peuple Annamite. We have also included recipes of dishes that highlight the cultural exchange of French and Vietnamese food practices. These recipes highlight the lasting impact of colonialism as not just a time in history but a continued influence on Vietnam’s culture and values. We hope to make this website a resource for in class instruction; we have done so by including discussion points on etiquette and having students reflect on their own ideas of table manners for their respective backgrounds and how there are power hierarchies entrenched within.
Navigating our site:
Data Introduction: Click to learn more about data and our methods of processing it!
Meal Process: Image analysis of each step of the food preparation process.
Table Setting Activity: An interactive activity for students to learn more about Vietnamese culture during the French colonial period
Banh Mi Game: Create your own Banh Mi and learn more about the ingredients while doing so!
More: Get recipes and restaurant reccomendations!
Pavana Atawale: I am a Computer Science major and DH minor, so I am interested in using my technical background to research and analyze humanities subjects that I find interesting. I love cooking and food in general, so I am excited to get the chance to delve into another culture's food practices. In my free time, I enjoy listening to music, baking, and reading. For this project, I created the data visualizations (pie charts and RST), and I compiled the "Eating Meal" collage. I also developed the "Make Your Own Banh Mi" game from scratch.
Desirae Barrios: I am an anthropology major and a digital humanities minor. I chose to major in anthropology specifically because I love people! I love learning about others and their cultures, practices and beliefs, and why people do things the way they do. This project was particularly fascinating to me because we were able to learn and share how French colonialism influenced Vietnamese cuisine! I am also a huge foodie so this project was really fun to work on. I helped with data cleaning and visualization, and pulled together images of different cooking tools to discuss the changes the French brought to the tools used to prepare meals.
Emily Calkins: My major is anthropology so I am interested in the lived practices of culture. More specifically, my research for the Anthro department has centered around street food in Guatemala and the influences of Colonialism and Catholicism on gender roles. It’s exciting that I can explore power dynamics and colonial influences through food in another time period and part of the world! I’m looking forward to making this project Interactive and digestible for a wide audience and would love to see it used in an educational setting.
Amanda Lau: I am a Linguistics & Computer Science major and DH minor! I have always loved learning about the history behind the things that I love, so it was fascinating to dive deep into Vietnamese cuisine and how it came to. be. On this project, I primarily worked on crafting our narrative. I also worked on the image analysis of the "preparing the dish" section of the meal process.
Diana Tran: data cleaning, data visualization. I plan on also using my background in UI/UX design to think about how to portray the narrative and data visualizations we have. I worked on the classroom activity and analysis of "food eating area".