A01=Ty Matejowsky
architecture
Atlanta
Author_Ty Matejowsky
blue-collar customer base
boycotts
breakfast fare
business history
business strategies
capitalism
Category=JBCC1
Category=JBCC4
Category=JHMC
Category=WB
Civil Rights era
Confederate flag
corporate branding identity
crime
desegregation
diners
diversity
Dixie
down-home fare
drunken brawls
Eating out
eq_bestseller
eq_food-drink
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fast food
fast-casual food
film
Food Studies
food studies analysis
freak flag
golf
graveyard shift
gun violence
hash browns
Highways
Hip Hop
history
integration
Jim Crow
jukeboxes
lunch counters
marketing slogans
Mason-Dixon line
media coverage
music
NAACP
NASCAR
neo-liberalism
politics
pop culture
race
racial discrimination
Red State America
restaurant
restaurant chains
restaurant locations
restaurant marketing
semiotics
signage
sit-ins
songs
Southern culture
Southern dining institution
Southern heritage
Southern Imaginary
Southern Studies
sports
stand-up comedy
television
Tik Tok
Toddle House
tourism
Waffle House
Waffle House Museum
What are the Tunie Awards?
What is routine activity theory?
What is the Southern imaginary?
Who are Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner?
working-class clientele
Product details
- ISBN 9780817321444
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 165 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 13 Dec 2022
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A critical meditation of the iconic 24-7 roadside chain and its place in the southern imaginary
Waffle House has long been touted as an icon of the American South. The restaurant’s consistent foregrounding as a resonant symbol of regional character proves relevant for understanding much about the people, events, and foodways shaping the sociopolitical contours of today’s Bible Belt. Whether approached as a comedic punchline on the Internet, television, and other popular media or elevated as a genuine touchstone of messy American modernity, Waffle House, its employees, and everyday clientele do much to transcend such one-dimensional characterizations, earning distinction in ways that regularly go unsung.
Smothered and Covered: Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary is the first book to socioculturally assess the chain within the field of contemporary food studies. In this groundbreaking work, Ty Matejowsky argues that Waffle House’s often beleaguered public persona is informed by various complexities and contradictions. Critically unpacking the iconic eatery from a less reductive perspective offers readers a more realistic and nuanced portrait of Waffle House, shedding light on how it both reflects and influences a prevailing southern imaginary—an amorphous and sometimes conflicting collection of images, ideas, attitudes, practices, linguistic accents, histories, and fantasies that frames understandings about a vibrant if also paradoxical geographic region.
Matejowsky discusses Waffle House’s roots in established southern foodways and traces the chain’s development from a lunch-counter restaurant that emerged across the South. He also considers Waffle House’s place in American and southern popular culture, highlighting its myriad depictions in music, television, film, fiction, stand-up comedy, and sports. Altogether, Matejowsky deftly and persuasively demonstrates how Waffle House serves as a microcosm of today’s South with all the accolades and criticisms this distinction entails.
Waffle House has long been touted as an icon of the American South. The restaurant’s consistent foregrounding as a resonant symbol of regional character proves relevant for understanding much about the people, events, and foodways shaping the sociopolitical contours of today’s Bible Belt. Whether approached as a comedic punchline on the Internet, television, and other popular media or elevated as a genuine touchstone of messy American modernity, Waffle House, its employees, and everyday clientele do much to transcend such one-dimensional characterizations, earning distinction in ways that regularly go unsung.
Smothered and Covered: Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary is the first book to socioculturally assess the chain within the field of contemporary food studies. In this groundbreaking work, Ty Matejowsky argues that Waffle House’s often beleaguered public persona is informed by various complexities and contradictions. Critically unpacking the iconic eatery from a less reductive perspective offers readers a more realistic and nuanced portrait of Waffle House, shedding light on how it both reflects and influences a prevailing southern imaginary—an amorphous and sometimes conflicting collection of images, ideas, attitudes, practices, linguistic accents, histories, and fantasies that frames understandings about a vibrant if also paradoxical geographic region.
Matejowsky discusses Waffle House’s roots in established southern foodways and traces the chain’s development from a lunch-counter restaurant that emerged across the South. He also considers Waffle House’s place in American and southern popular culture, highlighting its myriad depictions in music, television, film, fiction, stand-up comedy, and sports. Altogether, Matejowsky deftly and persuasively demonstrates how Waffle House serves as a microcosm of today’s South with all the accolades and criticisms this distinction entails.
