Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) - Softcover

Ott, Cindy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295993324 ISBN 13: 9780295993324

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2013

Synopsis

Why do so many Americans drive for miles each autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans reserve it for holiday pies and other desserts that celebrate the harvest season and the rural past. They decorate their houses with pumpkins every autumn and welcome Halloween trick-or-treaters with elaborately carved jack-o'-lanterns. Towns hold annual pumpkin festivals featuring giant pumpkins and carving contests, even though few have any historic ties to the crop.

In this fascinating cultural and natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have used the pumpkin to fulfull their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms and rural communities have been revitalized in the process. And while the pumpkin has inspired American myths and traditions, the pumpkin itself has changed because of the ways people have perceived, valued, and used it. Pumpkin is a smart and lively study of the deep meanings hidden in common things and their power to make profound changes in the world around us.

Visit the author's website for more information: http://www.pumpkincurioushistory.com/just-another-squash-12000-bce-to-1600.html

About this title

About the Author

Cindy Ott is an associate professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University and the author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon (University of Washington Press, 2012). In addition to publishing articles in the fields of environmental history, food studies, visual and material culture, and history and memory, Cindy has organized exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of the Rockies, community development projects at Saint Louis University, and historic preservation projects the National Park Service. Cindy is the graphics and Gallery essay co-editor of Environmental History and a regular grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities, from which she was awarded a grant in 2006. She was a fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History during the academic year 2013–2014 and a visiting researcher at Stanford University's Bill Lane Center of the American West in 2012. She is currently writing a book with the working title, "Biscuits and Buffalo: Squashing Myths about Food in Indian Country" about the history of food consumption and production on reservations in the American northern Plains. She is also working on an article about the Miss Indian America pageant, which took place in Sheridan, Wyoming from 1952 to 1983.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295993324
• ISBN 13: 9780295993324
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336