Food and American TV

This interdisciplinary volume investigates American serial television, exploring how food serves as a compelling lens to examine cultural narratives, societal dynamics, and the artistry of storytelling.

As both a mirror and a molder of cultural values, television serves as a powerful platform for ideological discourse and public consciousness. Within this dynamic medium, the portrayal of food emerges as a fascinating lens through which cultural identities and social dynamics are both reflected and reimagined. This volume employs a rich array of methodologies to reveal how television shapes and reflects societal narratives, cultural norms, and personal identities. By intersecting literary and media studies with the vibrant field of food studies, a discipline that unpacks the intricate ties between food, culture, and identity, this volume explores how American identity is constructed, challenged, and redefined when food takes center stage in serial television. The chapters examine narrative-driven series such as The Brady Bunch, The Bear, Star Trek, Ted Lasso, Only Murders in the Building, Lessons in Chemistry, and others, emphasizing the role of food and drink in shaping characters, advancing plots, establishing settings, and driving conflicts to resolution. Through this exploration, the collection examines how culinary symbols on the small screen become a narrative device for interrogating the essence of American identity.

The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of food studies, media studies, cultural studies, and literary studies.

Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis is Associate Professor of Literary Studies, working at the Institute of English Studies at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. She is the author of Race and Repast: Foodscapes in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature (2022) and coauthor of Pathologizing Black Bodies: The Legacy of Plantation Slavery (2023).

Carrie Helms Tippen is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Education at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, USA. She is the author of Inventing Authenticity: How Cookbook Writers Redefine Southern Identity (2018) and Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks (2025).