The Gastrodynamics of Displacement: Place-Making and Gustatory Identity in the Immigrants’ Midwest

Eating is one of the most basic human activities, and food interconnects with both collective and individual identities. As Europeans migrated to the rural United States in the nineteenth century, adopting and interpreting new food-ways was an important aspect of the forging of new immigrant selves. Thinking about food helped immigrants both to resist and to accommodate changes that eventually would prove inevitable for them.