FOOD FOR THOUGHT: THE WPA'S PORTRAIT OF FOOD IN AMERICA BEFORE WWII WITH MARK KURLANSKY
THURSDAY, May 14, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Free. Reservations Required. Please call 215.409.6700 or order online.
Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach
Kirby Auditorium
National Constitution Center
Independence Mall
525 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA
Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America. In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Federal Writers' Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called "America Eats," was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and was never completed. Join the National Constitution Center for a special conversation with Mark Kurlansky about the WPA’s portrait of food in Pre-World War II America. Rick Nichols of the Philadelphia Inquirer moderates. This program is being presented as part of the Knight Constitutional Conversations series.
From New York automats to Georgia Coca-Cola parties, from Arkansas possum-eating clubs to Puget Sound salmon feasts, from Choctaw funerals to South Carolina Barbecues, the WPA writers found Americans in their regional niches and eating an enormous diversity of meals. From Mississippi chittlins to Indiana persimmon puddings, Maine lobsters and Montana beavertails, they recorded the curiosities, commonalities, and communities of American food.
Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times-bestselling and James A. Beard Award-winning author of many books, including Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History and 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. He is the winner of a Bon Appetit American Food and Entertaining Award for Food Writer of the Year, and the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award for Food Book of the Year, as well as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Rick Nichols moderates. Nichols is a long-time writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer whose weekly food columns are frequently anthologized in Best Food Writing, the annual collection. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
The Knight Constitutional Conversation series have been generously underwritten by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.
A book sale and signing will follow the program courtesy of Joseph Fox Bookshop. The garage at the National Constitution Center will be closed for this program. Parking for this event is available for $7.00 at the Independence Visitor's Center garage located on 5th Street between Market and Arch Streets. Parking availability is subject to change, so please call the Constitution Center on the day of the program or check our web site for more information. Please also see our directions by public transportation.
For reservations please call 215.409.6700 or order online. Programs at the National Constitution Center begin promptly and latecomers may not be admitted to the program. Please note that this program is subject to change.
Links:
The Food of a Younger Land
A Tasty Stew of Food History by Rick Nichols
