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Catarina Passidomo ’04, associate professor of environmental studies at Washington and Lee University, recently wrote a paper published in Food, Culture & Society, an international peer-reviewed journal of multidisciplinary research.
Passidomo’s article, titled “Gastroimaginaries: a framework for conceptualizing narratives of food and place in the American South,” focuses on the concept of gastroimaginaries, a narrative that uses food as a rhetorical device to define and encapsulate what are believed to be the essential characteristics of a people, place and time.
The article examines how people view their social existence and identify with others to underscore the significance of food-related narratives. These narratives often shape, reinforce or contest regional identities and signal membership within specific groups or imagined communities.
“The article develops a portion of the theoretical framework for a book project that I’m working on,” said Passidomo. “That project, tentatively titled ‘Gastroimaginaries: Dreams of Food and Place in Peru and the American South’ presents a comparative analysis of the role of food in place-branding in two distinct regions with linked socioenvironmental histories. I’m happy to publish some of the preliminary research in Food, Culture & Society, the journal for the Association for the Study of Food and Society, which has a wide reach among food studies scholars and students.”
Passidomo is in her first year as a faculty member at W&L. She spent the previous 10 years teaching Southern studies and anthropology at the University of Mississippi. Passidomo earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and anthropology from W&L, a Master of Arts in anthropology from the University of Georgia and a doctorate in geography from Georgia. She specializes in sustainable food systems, human-environment interactions, agriculture and climate adaptations and food-and place-branding.
