Participant Info

First Name
Rachel
Last Name
Snell
Country
United States
State
MD Maryland
Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Website URL
https://virginiahousewifeproject.com/
Keywords
recipes, cookbooks, domesticity, sociability, women, nineteenth-century, twentieth-century, sustainability, food history
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

 

Dr. Snell’s current book project, “The Place of Happiness”: Recipes, Cookbooks, and the Negotiation of Domesticity in Anglo-America, 1830-1880,” examines printed and manuscript recipe collections to reveal the negotiation of domestic ideals and the role of recipes in defining the home as a social sphere. Her next project will explore Maine community cookbooks as windows into the eating habits of early twentieth-century Mainers at a critical juncture as local and homemade eating habits gave way to nationalized and commercialized food choices. This research will provide a sense of the development of a Maine food identity in the mid-twentieth century and, perhaps, provide insight into how to eat sustainably in the present. One of the first steps to eating sustainably is revisiting foodways before the invention and widespread acceptance of processed foods.

Recent Publications

“Banana Bread, Pineapple Pudding, Cocoanut Dainties, and Date Bars: Favorite Recipes as a Window into Women’s Lives in Early-Twentieth Century Downeast Maine,” Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook, Cynthia Prescott and Maureen Thompson, eds., Digital Press of the University of North Dakota (forthcoming, 2021).

“Judith Somes’ Sampler: Needlework and Education in Rural Maine before 1820,” Chebacco: The Magazine of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society XXI (2020), 70-78.

“Favorite Recipes: Relationships Past and Present in the Pages of a Regional Community Cookbook,” Chebacco: The Magazine of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society XIX (2018), 43-49.

“‘God, Home, and Country:’ Women, Historical Memory, and National Identity in English Canada and the United States,” American Review of Canadian Studies 48, no. 2 (2018), 244-255.

“Favorite Recipes: Relationships Past and Present in the Pages of a Regional Community Cookbook,” Chebacco: The Magazine of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society XIX (2018), 43-49.

“The Sabine Women Re-Imagined: Women and the Power of Persuasion in the Early National Peace Movement,” Maine History 51, no. 1 (2017), 63-82.

“As North American as Pumpkin Pie: Cookbooks and the Development of National Cuisine in North America, 1796-1854,” Cuizine: The Journal of Canadian Food Cultures 5, no. 2 (2014), http://www.erudit.org/revue/cuizine/2014/v5/n2/1026771ar.html.

Media Coverage
Bill Green’s Maine, “Here’s Your Darn Figgy Pudding,” December 21, 2018, https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/entertainment/television/bill-greens-maine/heres-your-darn-figgy-pudding/97-65561866-02ff-42f2-8723-088e5e0d63d4. “Role of food in
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
North America
Expertise by Chronology
18th century, 19th century, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Food History, Gender, Libraries & Archives, Local & Regional, Material Culture, Museums, Public History, Religion, Rural & Agrarian History, Women