Feeding, Educating, Dieting: a Transnational Approach to Nutrition Discourses in Children’s Narratives (Britain and Italy, 1850-1900)

Project Information

FED

Grant agreement ID: 840686

DOI

10.3030/840686

Project closed

EC signature date 12 April 2019

Start date 1 July 2019

End date 29 September 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 183 473,28

EU contribution

€ 183 473,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FED (Feeding, Educating, Dieting: a Transnational Approach to Nutrition Discourses in Children’s Narratives (Britain and Italy, 1850-1900))

Reporting period: 2019-07-01 to 2021-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

‘Feeding, Educating, Dieting’ (FED) is a comparative qualitative analysis of mal/nutrition narratives, i.e. images of characters eating/fasting, in 1850-1900 British and Italian children's literature. Adopting a new historicist/discourse theory approach to comparative reading of British and Italian narratives, the project examines nineteenth-century trans/national discourses about child mal/nutrition. Authors examined include Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens for the English corpus and Collodi, De Amicis and Capuana for the Italian corpus. The researcher will read the narratives alongside such non-fiction texts as cooking and puericulture handbooks and magazines and archival materials from hospitals and schools to observe how the narratives absorbed and elaborated social, medical and gender discourses about food that circulated through the non-fiction texts.
FED's key-goal is to assess literature’s role in circulating these discourses, comparing its use in the two countries’ socio-pedagogical philosophies and considering also the conflation of scientific and domestic nutrition discourses in 1850-1900 Europe. The project's overall objective is to promote discussion on how literary studies, using transnational comparative approaches, can address current European issues such as child mal/nutrition, as identified in the EU Action Plan on Childhood Obesity 2014-2020.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

REPORTS SUBMITTED:
Career and Development Plan (WP2, D2.1)
Monitoring Reports 1, 2, 3, and 4 (WP1, D1.2)
Report on Training and Seminars attended sem. 1 and 2 (WP2, D2.2 2.3)
Secondary Sources Catalogue (WP3, D3.1)
Comparative Reading: conceptual map and report (WP3, D3.2 3.3)
Preliminary Report on New Historicist Analysis (WP4, D4.1)
Dissemination and Communication Plan (WP5, D5.1)
Report on feedback on taught seminars (WP6, D6.2)

DISSEMINATION:
- PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
Gasperini, Anna. "Gluttonous children: food and temptation in British and Italian late-nineteenth century children’s literature and medical discourse". SUBMITTED TO: Journal of Victorian Culture (JVC). STATUS: accepted
Gasperini, Anna. “‘I know I'm fatter’: hunger and bodily awareness in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden”. Rhesis – International Journal of Linguistics, Philology and Literature. Issue 11.2 2020. STATUS: published
Gasperini, Anna. Little Precossi, stunted Becky: a comparative analysis of child hunger and national body health discourses in late nineteenth and early-twentieth century children’s literature in Italian and English. SUBMITTED TO: Modern Languages Open (MLO). STATUS: accepted

- CONFERENCE PAPERS
12/2019 – “Quaglie, Maiali, e bocconi reali": i pericoli di essere animali da ingrasso in due fiabe dell'Ottocento’. 7th One-day International Conference “Christmas Wonders” of the International Research Group of Children’s Literature, Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples.
07/2020 – ‘When Beef Tea and Pasta Met: Nutrition Discourses in British and Italian Children's Periodicals’. VPFA 12th Annual Conference “Victorian Encounters”, University of Greenwich.
04/2021 – ‘“I'm so hungry I could almost eat you!” Child nutrition, degeneration, and national health in Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess’. Food and/In Children’s Culture – National, International and Transnational Perspective International Online Conference at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
07/2021 – ‘Unloving parents and incorporeal children: familial exclusion and corporeality in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911)’. VPFA 13th Annual Conference “Victorian Inclusion and Exclusion”, University of Greenwich.
07/2021 – ‘Biopower, degeneration, and child malnutrition: Encountering the hungry in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905).’ Dark Economies - Anxious Futures, Fearful Pasts Conference, Falmouth University.

-ORGANISED EVENTS
11/2019 – ‘Curious Appetites! Food in Victorian Children’s Literature’. Lecture by Emeritus Professor Peter Hunt, University of Cardiff. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Approx. 30 attendees.
04/2021 – ‘Food and/In Children’s Culture – National, International and Transnational Perspective’ International Online Conference at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Delegates: 40; participants: approx. 170

- OTHER DISSEMINATION EVENTS
press release on Ca' Foscari website and local newspapers (Gazzettino di Mestre)
contributed to creation of project web page on Ca' Foscari website
interviewed on FED, its aim and research conducted within its scope in occasion of the online edition of Venetonight, Ca' Foscari's event for the European Researchers' Night
participated to the “Saturday classes” programme of “Romancing the Gothic - Free Online Classes, Book Groups and Film Watch-Alongs” by Dr Sam Hirst with a lesson titled “Eerie Food: Eating and Being Eaten in Victorian’s Children’s Literature” (date: 09/2021)

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

PROGRESS BEYOND STATE OF THE ART
- CONFLATE two distinct theoretical areas within children's literature - food and nation studies - to look at how food conveys cultural values devoted to growing the healthy body of the nation.
- APPLY a "global/local" analytic approach to core themes related to food in children’s fiction – the figure of the mother and related gender issues, the body, and morals – and analyse them within the cultural framework that aimed to educate both child carers (through magazines and manuals) and children (by feeding them cultural values through literature) to strengthen their national identities.

EXPECTED RESULTS
MAIN RESULT: development of a framework to analyse the circulation of nineteenth-century child mal/nutrition discourses through children's fiction, highlighting their transnational nature
First Specific Objective (SO1): outline the core moral, physical, and social features of characters eating/starving in the selected narratives
Second Specific Objective (SO2): unpack how said features conveyed dominant discourses around gender roles, especially concerning the role of the woman/mother as the primary nourisher in the family,
Third Specific Objective (SO3): analyse images of eating/fasting characters within the framework of dominant social power discourses and discourses on the healthy body and mind

POTENTIAL IMPACT
FED builds critical mass around children’s literature studies, connecting areas that tend to operate separately – national identity, food studies, education history – and promoting collaborative, international explorations of the topic. It expands our understanding of the child malnutrition trans/national issue, revealing how children’s literature contributed to circulating nutrition discourses in two countries with different food cultures and a different background as regards their becoming national states. This is significant, as child mal/nutrition is an increasingly concerning health issue in Europe: it manifests itself through rising percentages of obese/overweight children and simultaneously affects countries with very different national backgrounds and food cultures. FED’s results will be deployed in the submission of a funding proposal within the Horizon Europe scheme to develop a collaborative international project devoted to harnessing literature and other forms of arts to challenge malnutrition among European youths.

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