On October 15, 2020, Dr. Gitanjali Shahani and Dr. Jennifer Park had a conversation titled, “We Are What You Eat: Conversations on Food and Race”, which was an installment of the critical race conversations series which is both organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library. By connecting food and race in early modern Europe, these two scholars hoped to give insights into modern presentations of racism through investigating pasts that are often excluded from history, especially the histories of people who lived in exploited colonies, European kitchens, or on plantations. While discussing the ‘we’ in the title, which is a play on the proverbial saying ‘you are what you eat’, Dr. Shahani explained that there is a long and violent history of food in connection with race that is erased or made more palatable through assimilation. The largest aim of this conversation was to demonstrate how the bodies that early modern Europeans racialized were often made edible, both figuratively and literally. The following post is a summary of Dr. Shahani and Dr. Park’s discussion as well as the inclusion of some interesting sources that provide further clarity on the lesson within the video.

When looking at the sources that Drs. Shahani and Park used to ground their claims, we can see that they engaged with many early modern artworks and cookery books; the scholars said this was because “race is structurally embedded in early modern food and recipe cultures”. By examining historical texts and images about food, they hoped to demonstrate how ‘otherness’ is “consumed and produced in relation to works on food”. The speakers explored this by nuancing the history of sugar in connection with European women and their relationship to the European colonies and the enslaved and exploited people within the colonies. They cited Kim Hall, a Renaissance English scholar, as a crucial figure in articulating how the early modern English women’s use of sugar contributed greatly to England’s colonial expansion during the period. As evidenced in many recipe books from early modern Europe, the inclusion of ‘exotic’ ingredients, such as spices from the West Indies, or valuable ingredients, like sugar, conferred prestige on the woman to whom the recipe book belonged. [1] Drs. Shahani and Park also expanded on how sugar connects white, European women with African slavery; because the European women increasingly demanded sugar for daily cooking, the need for more colonies and African slaves to work on plantations increased. Therefore, English women, specifically, had a large influence on the preservation of the English empire through their consumption patterns and material demands.

Moving on to a fascinating discussion of the procurement of spices in early modern Europe, Dr. Shahani and Dr. Park contextualized the uses of spices and addressed the misconception that spices were used for preserving foodstuffs. Much like sugar, the speakers told of how spices were desired in European kitchens for their “mysterious origins”, their inclusion in “sophisticated cuisines”, and their numerous uses in medicines and cosmetic products. Going on to discuss the popular recipe book of Hannah Woolley and the personal manuscript of Sarah Long from the early 1600s, the two speakers recounted the content of the household books that related to the “realm of the culinary and the curated”. Of special interest to the discussion leaders was the inclusion of spices in recipes for “intimate bodily practices”, especially one recipe that helped women who were dealing with miscarriages and another that hindered conception and/or induced miscarriages. The discussion leaders expanded on how many women in the seventeenth century relied on spices in recipes that aided in their personal health. Many European households in the early modern period experimented with natural remedies so that they might include them among the home-based medical recipes within the family recipe books. The knowledge of home remedies within the early modern household allowed women to practice medicine in an informal setting when they were not allowed to outside of the home due to the professionalization of the medical industry that occurred during this period. [2] However, despite the enthusiastic use of spices by English housewives, Dr. Shahani described fears from popular English columnists who condemned the use of spices due to the possibility that they might contaminate English traditions. Likely, this was also a prejudiced fear of the ‘other’, who was associated with the spices, and their possible infiltration of English society.

Near the end of their discussion, Dr. Shahani and Dr. Park turned to the topic of fluids in the early modern period in Europe, specifically foreign fluids. The two speakers gave a brief historical background on how the body was thought to be porous and fluid and governed by the four fluid humors; therefore, bodies affected and were affected by the environment and other bodies. Because the body was seen as so permeable and susceptible to outside influence, fluids were often perceived as dangerous. Echoing the fears of the aforementioned English columnists, Drs. Shahani and Park spoke to fears of the time that perceived foreign, racialized fluids as a threat, especially in relation to food. The speakers went on to say that according to early modern Europeans, these foreign ingredients had the potential to linger within the European body and transform its fluids; this fear was especially pungent in arguments about wet nurses due to the belief that blood and breastmilk were especially transformative and racially-charged. This fear of foreign bodies was often echoed throughout the period with parallel sentiments regarding the ‘unclean’ bodies of women who had recently given birth; their bodies were compared to sewers full of stench and filth and they were avoided due to the popular belief that the border between a new mother’s inner and outer body was drastically thinned after birth. [3] The fear of foreign, racialized bodies and women’s bodies speaks to the white, Patriarchal dictates of early modern European society that deemed white men as superior, or in this case, ‘clean’. Perhaps it was that these fluid bodies could not be contained that caused such fear and aversion among the European men.

While this was a brief summary of a few specific points in Dr. Shahani and Dr. Park’s discussion, I recommend watching the video yourself, which is embedded below! They go on to have an interesting discussion on mummies and medicinal cannibalism as well as a helpful Q&A session.