In this episode, Christopher Douglas (Jacksonville State University) leads Ashley Rattner (Jacksonville State University) through some of the most popular late 18th and early 19th-century content available on YouTube: period cooking recreation. If one were to search "18th century America" or "early America" on YouTube, the top results are short videos of people making food in recreation settings. This episode focuses specifically on Townsends, which covers 18th-century America and Early American, which focuses on the early 19th century. The ways these channels recreate the past omits voices that had fewer opportunities to publish during these periods, minimizing or ignoring the ways in which enslaved persons and Indigenous peoples made food, thus creating a limited recreation of America's historical past. The episode ends with suggestions for including more authentic recreation in the general-education classroom. Post-production support by Ryan Charlton (Georgia State University). Works Referenced at bit.ly/S09E01WorksReferenced. Transcript available at bit.ly/S09E01Transcript.

C19: America in the 19th Century

Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists

S09 E01 | Just Add Nutmeg: YouTube, Nostalgia, and the Fantasy of Early America

JUL 21, 202559 MIN
C19: America in the 19th Century

S09 E01 | Just Add Nutmeg: YouTube, Nostalgia, and the Fantasy of Early America

JUL 21, 202559 MIN

Description

In this episode, Christopher Douglas (Jacksonville State University) leads Ashley Rattner (Jacksonville State University) through some of the most popular late 18th and early 19th-century content available on YouTube: period cooking recreation. If one were to search "18th century America" or "early America" on YouTube, the top results are short videos of people making food in recreation settings. This episode focuses specifically on Townsends, which covers 18th-century America and Early American, which focuses on the early 19th century. The ways these channels recreate the past omits voices that had fewer opportunities to publish during these periods, minimizing or ignoring the ways in which enslaved persons and Indigenous peoples made food, thus creating a limited recreation of America's historical past. The episode ends with suggestions for including more authentic recreation in the general-education classroom. Post-production support by Ryan Charlton (Georgia State University). Works Referenced at bit.ly/S09E01WorksReferenced. Transcript available at bit.ly/S09E01Transcript.