Recent developments in sensory history highlight the rewards of a sensory approach to the topic of racial formation in twentieth century U.S. Yet, few explicitly focus on the sense of taste. This dissertation looks at sensory interaction over food as a site for the making of the interwar American racial landscape. The narrative focuses on the cornerstone period of the late 1930s-early 1940s and considers, through the notion of sensory economy, the extent to which the senses are part of modern circuits of economic and cultural exchanges. The argument builds on the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) archive, especially the America Eats project; The FWP was one of the art programs of the New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) and an important part of the liberal state cultural apparatus. Considering the sense of taste as a cultural and economic currency circulating throughout the American social fabric as well as through the FWP archive allows highlighting taste as a medium for the negotiation of raced, gendered, ethnic, and regional identities in the interwar period. I examine how the FWP’s nostalgic and patriotic endeavour to record a national cuisine in the midst of the Great Depression contributed to the production and archiving of a prescriptive sensory and culinary knowledge about what was American food and who American eaters were. This dissertation documents how sensory interaction participated to the policing of the colour line but also to the creation of new tastes and, ultimately, to the birth of a commodified culinary plurality. The narrative also highlights how the encroachment of the food industries on American taste and the coming of World War II led to the upholding of conservative gender roles and stereotyped racial imagery. Finally, this dissertation examines the notion of region in the U.S. and looks at how the search for regional cuisines led FWP workers to use raced tastes as signals of regional authenticity. Overall, I suggest that a combined analysis of taste and race not only further our historical understanding of twentieth century American food culture but also enhances our comprehension of the role of the senses in race making.Ph
