Date of Award
5-1-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Southern Studies
First Advisor
Annemarie Anderson
Second Advisor
Ellie Palazzolo
Third Advisor
Jaime Harker
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This thesis examines the emerging question of what constitutes “queer food.” It asks how this concept takes on a distinct regional form in the United States South. Drawing on oral histories, archival materials, and cookbooks, it argues that queer southern foodways are not only a subset of queer food studies, but also a distinct cultural and political formation shaped by southern histories of race, labor, family, and survival. The thesis makes the case that queer southern foodways function simultaneously as protest, utopian practice, and aesthetic pleasure. Through the act of cooking, eating, and sharing food, queer southerners articulate alternative social worlds rooted in care, intimacy, and collective survival. Four interrelated themes emerge from this analysis: the development of a “political palate,” in which food choices, provenance, and ethical commitments express political identity; the centrality of pleasure, eroticism, and “deliciousness” as modes of queer joy and resistance; the role of food as a medium for community formation, commensality, and mutual aid; and, specific to southern queer communities, the reclamation and reimagining of southern cultural heritage through the “queering” of regional foodways. Taken together, these practices demonstrate that queer southern foodways operate as a form of embodied protest and utopian world-building. They illuminate how food can function as both a site of resistance to dominant narratives of the South and queerness, and as a practice of imagining and enacting more livable, delicious futures.
Recommended Citation
Knox-McConnell, Astrid Janie, "Recipe for Resistance: Oral Histories of Queer Foodways in the US South" (2026). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8840.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/8840