[ecrea] CFP - Food on Early European TVs

*Food and Cooking on Early European Television*
/Call for Abstracts /

Food has been part of television from its beginnings. As technology that 
supported producing and broadcasting television pictures developed 
through the 1920s in both Europe and US, the first experimental TV 
service was established in Britain and then Germany in 1935 (Hickethier 
2008). A year later, a Miss Dickson, also known as a singing cook, first 
cooked on British television (Geddes 2018), followed by the more 
recognised chef Boulestin. But it was only in the decades following 
World War II, when broadcasting technology was further improved and the 
European nations slowly started to come to grips with the new realities 
of postwar Europe that food and cooking became firmly established as one 
of the most regular programmes on European televisions, both East and West.

This interest in food programming and especially food cooking shows, was 
partially to do with a particular focus of the European public 
broadcasters on educational contents of its television schedule, 
although this was not the sole reason for popularity of food and cooking 
on television screens. The audiences were often fascinated with 
television as a new medium in itself, and shows involving cooking became 
a familiar genre through which they could receive information about new 
foodstuffs that became popular in Europe through the postwar decades and 
popular recipes, but also educate themselves about manners and 
appropriate use of new household products that European industries 
produced after the War. Apart from offering a window to tastes and 
lifestyles that allowed Europeans of all walks of life to strive for 
self improvement (Bell and Hollows 2006; Lewis 2008; Naccarato and 
Lebesco 2012; de Solier 2005), food television also provided a narrative 
for self identification in terms of nation as it introduced dishes that 
“we” eat, while also allowing for getting to know the “other”. It 
affected gender roles as it either reconfirmed women’s role as a 
homemaker or introduced novel gender patterns that transcended the 
previous divisions (Moseley 2008).

Food programming was one of the TV genres that features on almost all 
European televisions from early on, although in different formats, 
genres and quantities. The aim of this edited volume will therefore be 
to critically examine the role of food programming on European early 
television and the impact it might have had on food habits and 
identities for the European audiences.^1 <#sdfootnote1sym> The role of 
television in this process was unprecedented, since, as Turnock (2008: 
6) argues for Britain, “[e]xpansion of television institutions promoted 
social and cultural change through the development of production 
practices, technologies and programme forms that made culture 
increasingly visible in this new way; and this visibility promoted 
consumer culture.” However, notwithstanding the importance of food 
programming on early television, research into early food television in 
Europe is surprisingly scarce, despite considerable interest in early 
television history on both east and western sides of Europe (see, for 
example, Bonner 2009; Buscemi 2014; Comunian 2018; Eriksson 2016; Geddes 
2017; Moseley 2008; Tominc 2015; and for US, Collins 2005; Oren 2019). 
To an extent, this is understandable, given the potential lack of 
audiovisual sources related to early television overall (O’Dwyer 2008; 
Holmes 2008) where many programmes have not been preserved due to the 
nature of early television broadcasting. However, this gap in 
scholarship is also surprising amid current scholarly interest in food 
media and their relevance for contemporary societies (/e.g./Adema 2000; 
Bradley 2016; Hollows 2003; Ketchum 2005; Leer andPovlsen 2016; Oren 
2019; Rousseau 2012; Strange 1998; and so forth). This collection 
therefore, first, looks to address this major gap in research on early 
food television in Europe; and second, to provide important material for 
a comparative study into European food broadcasting and the impact this 
might have had on ways of consuming food in Europe. In this volume, *the 
aim *is therefore to explore early cooking on European television in 
terms of its differences and similarities but specifically *focusing 
on:* - national contexts that allowed for development of specific food 
programmes and how this was reflected in the content - genres of food 
programming across Europe (e.g. various variants of cookery shows, 
travelogs, documentary-like representations of foods and so on) - 
content of these shows in terms of food: Who cooked? What did they cook? 
- who was the intended audience of the television programmes? - what was 
the impact of these shows on national or supra national food cultures? - 
what was the overall narrative of these television programmes in terms 
of identity, social change, modernity etc.? - to what extend did 
national broadcasting regulations influence the kinds of television 
programmes made about food and cooking? Case studies *from all European 
countries*are encouraged. *Submission of Abstracts*

If you would like to participate in this edited volume, please send:

- a 300 word abstract that contains aim and brief background, sources of 
data & method, and potential argument/results if already known, and

- a 50 word bio


to Dr Ana Tominc ((_atominc /at/ qmu.ac).uk_) by Friday, *26 October 2018*. 
Notification of acceptance of abstract will be by *31 October 2018. *Any 
queries should be addressed to Dr Ana Tominc (Queen Margaret University 
Edinburgh).


*Information on Publication*

The collection will be published with a major English language academic 
publisher, likely in 2020. If the abstract is accepted, the authors will 
deliver the final article in good English by *1 October 2019. *The 
length will be between *6-8,000 words including references and 
footnotes,*depending on the final arrangement with the publisher. The 
exact length and formatting style will be communicated to the authors 
once the abstract has been accepted. An example of visual material is 
encouraged, although seeking permissions for publication remain with the 
author.


*References *

Adema, Pauline (2000): Vicarious consumption: Food, Television and the 
Ambiguity of Modernity. /Journal of American and Comparative 
Culture/23(3):113-124.

Bell, David and Joanna Hollows (2006): Towards a history of lifestyle. 
In David Bell and Joanna Hollows (eds): /Historicizing Lifestyle. 
Mediating taste, consumption and identity from the 1900s to 1970s. 
/Aldershot: Ashgate.

Bonner, Frances (2009): Early multi-platforming. Television food 
programmes, cookbooks and other print spin-offs. /Media History /15 (3): 
345-358.

Bradley, Perri ed. (2016): /Food, Media and Contemporary Culture/. Palgrave.

Buscemi, Francesco (2014): /National culinary capital: How the state and 
TV shape the 'taste of the nation' to create distinction. PhD thesis. 
/Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University Edinburgh.

Collins, Kathleen (2009): /Watching what we Eat. The Evolution of 
Television Cooking Shows/. New York, London: Continuum.

Comunian, Cristina (2018): /The Italian culinary identity shaped by 
early television broadcasts of Mario Soldati and his Viaggio nella Valle 
del Pol alla richerca di cibi genuine (Journey along the Po Valley in 
search of genuine food). Masters Dissertation. /Edinburgh: Queen 
Margaret University Edinburgh.

Eriksson, Göran (2016): The ‘ordinary-ization’ of televised cooking 
expertise: A historical study of cooking instruction programmes on 
Swedish television. /Discourse, Context & Media/, 3: 29-39.

Geddes, Kevin (2017): ‘Above all, garnish and presentation’: An 
evaluation of Fanny Cradock’s contribution to home cooking in Britain. 
/International Journal of Consumer Studies/, 41 (6): 745-753.

Geddes, Kevin (2018): /Nailed It! The history, development and evolution 
of entertainment in British Television Cooking Programmes 1936-1976. /A 
Presentation at the 1^st Biennial Conference on Food and Communication. 
Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University, 6-7 September 2018.

Hickethier, Knut (2008): Early TV: Imagining and Realising Television. 
In Bignell, Jonathan and Andreas Fickers (eds) (2008): /A European 
Television History. /Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 55-78.

Hollows, Joanne (2003): Oliver’s Twist. Leisure, Labour and Domestic 
Masculinity in The Naked Chef. /International Journal of Cultural 
Studies/6 (2): 229–248.

Holmes, Su (2008): /Entertaining television. The BBC and popular culture 
in the 1950s/. Manchester: MUP.

Ketchum, Cheri (2005): The Essence of cooking Shows: How the Food 
Network Constructs Consumer Fantasies. /Journal of Communication 
Enquiry/, 29 (3): 217-234.

Leer, Jonathan and Povlsen, Karen K. eds. (2016): /Food and Media: 
Practices, Distinctions and Heterotopias. /Routledge.

Lewis, Tania (2008): /Smart living: lifestyle media and popular 
expertise/. New York: Peter Lang.

Moseley, Rachel (2008): Marguerite Patten, television cookery and 
postwar British femininity. In: Gillis, Stacy and Hollows, Joanne 
(eds.), /Feminism, domesticity and popular culture. Routledge advances 
in sociology ./London: Routledge, 17-31.

Naccarato, Peter and Kathleen LeBesco (2012): /Culinary Capital/. 
London, New York: Berg.

O’Dwyer, Andy (2008): European Television Archives and the Search for 
Audiovisual Sources. In Bignell, Jonathan and Andreas Fickers (eds) 
(2008): /A European Television History/. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 257-263.

Oren, Tasha (2019/*): *//Food TV /(Routledge Television Guidebooks). 
London: Routledge.

Rousseau, Signe. 2012. /Food Media: Celebrity Chefs and the Politics of 
Everyday Interference./London and New York: Berg.

de Solier, Isabelle (2005): TV Dinners: Culinary Television, Education 
and Distinction. /Continuum/, 19 (4): 465-481.

Strange, Nikki (1998): Perform, educate, entertain: ingredients of the 
cookery programme genre. In Christine Geraghty and David Lusted (eds), 
/The Television Studies Book./London, New York: Arnold, 301-312.

Tominc, Ana (2015): Cooking on Slovene national television during 
socialism: an overview of cooking programmes from 1960 to 1990. 
/Družboslovne razprave, /XXXI (79): 27-44.

Turnock, Rob (2007): /Television and Consumer Culture. Britain and the 
Transformation of Modernity/. London: I.B. Tauris.



1 <#sdfootnote1anc> For the purposes of this collection, early 
television will be defined dependent on the context of national 
television and the start of their national broadcasters. While attempts 
to established television started already before 1945, it was only in 
the two decades following WW2 that the majority of the European nations 
established their TVs, mostly through the 1950s and 1960s (Hickethier 
2008: 56).


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