Kitchen Tables Research Articles

From Bylines to Headlines: Exploring Gender Bias in the News

The comparative lack of women in newsrooms and in news coverage is a global problem, typically rooted in countries’ masculinized norms that permeate society writ large, from kitchen tables to newsrooms to halls of power. Journalistic coverage often reinforces this gendered hierarchy. The nine articles in this themed collection examine this power dynamic across seven nations, chronicling the low representation of women in newsrooms and news coverage, and identifying the persistent challenges women journalists face. Many of the articles call for action at the root level of the problem: a change in society and culture.

The art of the seminar and the power of small things

ABSTRACT Jeffrey Goldfarb’s intellectual engagement in the public sphere is rooted in his commitment to the seminar as a unique form of pedagogy, social interaction, and democratic deliberation. His skill around a table is, however, not only a craft that has been honed in the classroom; Goldfarb’s art of the seminar has also travelled geographically and virtually onto various platforms. His commitment to dialogue continues to serve as a way in which individuals can engage with one another across differences. From his early fascination with conversations around kitchen tables in communist Poland to the Democracy and Diversity Summer Schools that he organised with colleagues while teaching at the New School, from the virtual forums of Deliberately Considered, Public Seminar and The Democracy Seminar to his current professorship at the American University of Afghanistan, Goldfarb invites faculty and students to engage with one another to think critically about the pressing problems of our increasingly fractured world.

Multipurpose Domesticity: Labour, Leisure and Kitchen Tables

AbstractIn the grip of the viral contagion of the recent past and its attendant lockdowns, many of us started working from home for the first time and transitioning to various online communication methods such as Zoom or Teams. However, home working is not a new phenomenon; our domestic spaces have always had to embrace and adapt to multifunctional activities they may not have been designed for. The introduction of online spaces, though, adds a new layer to consider. Historian and writer Holly Nielsen explores our contemporary domestic condition, its histories and its interaction with electronic space.

Carter family issues statement about health of former First Lady

In a statement released May 30 by the family of former President Jimmy Carter, it was shared that former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has dementia. The family's news was distributed through The Carter Center, a not‐for‐profit organization geared toward promoting peace, protecting democracy and fighting disease, founded by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. “She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the Center release stated. “Mrs. Carter has been the nation's leading mental health advocate for much of her life. First in the Georgia governor's mansion, then in the White House, and later at The Carter Center, she urged improved access to care and decreased stigma about issues surrounding mental health. One in 10 older Americans have dementia, a condition that affects overall mental health. We recognize, as she did more than half a century ago, that stigma is often a barrier that keeps individuals and their families from seeking and getting much‐needed support. We hope sharing our family's news will increase important conversations at kitchen tables and in doctor's offices around the country. As the founder of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, Mrs. Carter often noted that there are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers. The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey. We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”

Painting the Kitchen Tables: Exploring women's domestic creative spaces through publication design

The spaces women take up in society have been shrouded in shame, disenfranchisement, and contention, with the kitchen as a focal point of this argument. This article aims to suggest ways in which women can take up space in the kitchen, this integral pillar of society that upholds connection and creativity as an art form. Adjacent to this subversive shift of connotation is the shifts within feminism, as feminist perspectives on women within kitchens develop alongside the historical movement. In this project, the researcher has utilised a post-positivist paradigm under an auto-ethnographic methodology to document, analyse, and celebrate the variations within feminist perspectives on creativity within domestic spaces through textile and publication design. In order to shift perspectives on these domestic spaces, the design outcomes paid tribute to feminist artists who made the kitchen their studio and others who captured the kitchen as an artistic contribution to the feminist perspectives on these spaces. Through heuristic methods of testing, experimentation, and physical outputs, the researcher curated a series of design artefacts that distil the visceral experiences of how women take up space in kitchens. Through publication design, there is a documentation of the shifting feminist perspectives on women's domestic spaces through contrast and analysis of articles, poems, recipes, and artist insights. These contexts are supported by the tactility of the physical design outcome made using textile, pottery, and printed matter. The research distils and provides a destination for the celebration of ways in which women take up space within the kitchen and the integral artistic creations within those spaces.

Women’s Work: Black Women’s Movement through Political Space

Women’s Work: Black Women’s Movement through Political Space Kaiama L. Glover (bio) Keisha N. Blain and Tiffany M. Gill, eds. To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019. 280 pp. ISBN 9780252042317 (cl.); 9780252051166 (ebook). Tiffany N. Florvil. Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. 296 pp. ISBN 9780252043512 (cl.); 9780252052392 (ebook). Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel. Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. 260 pp. ISBN 9780252042935 (cl.); 9780252051791 (ebook). Quiet as it’s kept, Black women’s work—across oceans and national borders, around kitchen tables and quilting circles, on stages and tour buses, in courthouses and classrooms—has long been a driving force in movements toward social justice on both the grandest and the most intimate scales. Three recent volumes of Black feminist scholarship have sought, successfully, to give voice to such work—to make Black women’s engagements in twentieth century freedom struggles more visible and more legible within the global historical record. Keisha N. Blain and Tiffany M. Gill’s edited collection To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism, Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel’s Reimagining Liberation: How Black French Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire, and Tiffany N. Florvil’s Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement are each committed to excavating unheard voices and to identifying Black women’s political communities unbound by the geopolitical borders of the nation-state. All three do the necessary work of affirming such communities retrospectively—that is, of making explicit and coherent in the present the exceptional phenomena that emerged dynamically and organically in the past. While a common motivation for these three volumes is redress—the setting right of a historical record that has been indifferent to or has even actively silenced Black women’s work—these studies do not dwell in a space of reaction or response to that fundamental injustice. Rather, these are works of storytelling and revelation, richly researched and insightful. They take as given the signal importance of recognizing Black women’s contributions to building the postwar world. The inquiries and discoveries that animate every one of these books comprise an adamant unsilencing [End Page 142] of the past. Each of these works presents a series of deep dives into alternative archives and proposes expansive conceptions of the textual, illuminating the histories of a diverse set of protagonists and establishing an inclusive canon of internationalist Black women thinkers, writers, performers, and other social actors. Each of them insists on the gendered and racialized specificity of the obstacles facing the women they bring to the fore, while also fully acknowledging both the intersectional alliances and the intramural conflicts that shaped these women’s visions of the future. Blain and Gill’s volume, To Turn the Whole World Over, brings together an impressive cohort of scholars whose research concerns the internationalist preoccupations and perspectives of Black US-American women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Without denying the impact or the presence of Black male intellectuals and political figures during this period, the editors compellingly establish Black internationalism as women’s work. Each of the eleven essays articulates the “gendered contours of black internationalism” and highlights the idiosyncratic challenges and expectations Black women contended with as they entered the fray of anti-racist and human rights activism (1). The book is anchored in the geopolitical space of the United States, from which it looks outward to Europe, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the Americas. As such, the matter of mobility—as a condition of possibility for Black women and (consequently) as a threat to the Euro-North American nation-state—is central to the contributors’ collective project. The volume’s first section, “Travel and Migrations,” considers how Black women’s mobility presented opportunities for individual and collective self-fashioning that pointedly implicated sub-Saharan Africa and its diasporas. Both Brandon Byrd’s and Kim Gallon’s essays bring us to historical moments when Haiti mattered crucially to Black US-American internationalism. Byrd chronicles...

Home and Away: On Visiting and Distanced Vision

Home and Away: On Visiting and Distanced Vision Vanessa Warne (bio) In his 1895 short story “The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes,” H. G. Wells dwells on what it means to be physically at home but cognitively away. The story’s protagonist, Sidney Davidson, is injured when lightning strikes the laboratory in London where he works. Unable to see his surroundings, his visual sense relocated to the other side of the world, Davidson watches penguins nesting on an island he has never visited, his viewpoint on this distant and unfamiliar scene shifting as he moves around London. While he knows from the sound of familiar voices and the feel of surfaces that he is still at home, both his vision and attention are far away. More fortunate than Davidson in the matter of laboratory accidents, participants in the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) 2022 online conference were, in our own way, both at home and away, visiting the conference’s virtual spaces at the same time that we were present for the day-to-day of our home lives. As we presented and heard work proposed many months earlier, we also became involved in the goings-on of each other’s homes. People we had met with previously in a series of interchangeable conference rooms spoke with us from their kitchen tables. We opened up temporary windows into our living spaces where, in addition to the predictable piles of books, piles of laundry waited to be folded. Dogs and cats gained conference-celebrity status, and we prefaced papers with apologies for the piano lesson happening in the next room. While we habitually both develop our ideas and write them up at home, the domestic origins of our conference papers tend to be obscured by their presentation in public spaces. This conference was an exception. We did our visiting, talking, and thinking while sitting in our most comfortable chairs and wearing shabby slippers; at least, I did. [End Page 656] It is, of course, to the great credit of our conference hosts, Carolyn Lesjak and Margaret Linley, that we were able to shake off our disappointment at yet another pandemic-necessitated pivot and make the most of the wonderful online event they created. In addition to the unexpected pleasure of visiting one another’s homes and campus offices, albeit virtually, other gains lessened our sense of loss. These included our lowered environmental impact and the reduction of barriers to participation, such as the cost of travel, challenges related to caregiving duties, and disabilities that are too often inadequately accommodated. We also came to a new appreciation of the beings with whom we share our homes, not least of them the housemates who gifted us all the internet bandwidth they could spare. Visiting across many time zones, we were reminded too of just how widely dispersed our homes and home institutions are, with British colleagues at the end of a long day joining West Coasters on their first cup of coffee to share ideas. Invited to suggest papers from the conference for publication, I chose three papers connected by their interest in spaces where people live or meet. While it’s possible I was predisposed to admire these papers by our shared experience of at-home-ness, I deeply appreciate the invitation these papers extend to us both to return to familiar rooms in the Victorian literary canon and to think in new ways about how built spaces either support or limit social connection. In his essay, Jon Rachmani takes up Bleak House (1852–53) and its definitions of home, offering a rich analysis of Phil Squod’s experiences of the city, of selfhood, and of unconventional forms of domestic space. In an essay on Little Dorrit (1855–57), Sarah Mason focuses on sensory experience and social connection, again in the context of the city. Alerting us to the role of London’s Iron Bridge in the novel’s depiction of intimacy, she contrasts the surprising quiet of the bridge with, for example, the Clennam house’s permeability to noise. And, returning us to one of the most readily visualized yet complex domestic spaces in nineteenth-century literature, Summer...

Show Me the Bibliography: Indigeneity and the Eighteenth Century

Show Me the Bibliography:Indigeneity and the Eighteenth Century Alice Te Punga Somerville (bio) What is Indigenous about the eighteenth century? What is Indigenous about this special issue? What is the difference between, on the one hand, studies of the eighteenth century that trace European imperial expansion and thus necessarily talk about Indigenous peoples and, on the other, whatever is happening in this collection—or indeed, whatever is happening specifically in these two longer essays by N. S. 'Ilaheva Tua'one and Julia Lum? If the mere presence of Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and worlds as objects of study or as topics of focus or as strands of interest was a satisfactory answer to these questions, it would be entirely plausible to argue that a great deal of existing scholarship about the eighteenth century could have been included in these pages, and that a special issue like this is surely redundant. An alternative answer could be that all of the people who have produced the scholarship are Indigenous—but that's not the case in this volume. Still another could be that the scholarship engages Indigenous language archives, or perhaps is written in Indigenous languages—but those aren't the cases here either. [End Page 255] Perhaps the answer is more about argument and method than about topic—that the scholarship in this special issue seeks to decenter Eurocentrism by centering Indigenous perspectives, although what such grand (and laudable) ambitions look like on the page, and in the review process, quickly becomes subjective and complex. How much less Cook does an essay need before it becomes Indigenous? Does it count if the focus is on how Cook and his peers and their crews engaged with Indigenous peoples, and if it does, how is that actually about Indigeneity and not just about non-Indigenous perspectives? How does one center "perspectives" of Indigenous peoples without resorting to stereotypes or generalization? And, for the purposes of this journal, how might one account for Eurocentrism (decentered or otherwise) or for Indigenous perspectives using the tools—and people—available through current academic conventions for ensuring and assuring rigor? A response I would proffer, which is less of a compromise and more of a stance than it might first appear, is: "all of these things and more." These questions—and my answer—may seem circular, but they sit at the heart of Indigenous literary studies and Indigenous Studies more broadly, and they provoke us to think carefully about the shapes and stakes of our research.1 None of the possible answers suggested in the previous paragraph is enough on its own, but together they weave something tangible. I use the metaphor of weaving here quite deliberately. This lineup of considerations is neither a bullet-point list of things for which keen (or cynical) scholars should aim, nor a tool for evaluating the degree—the quantum—of "Indigeneity" (or "engagement with Indigeneity") in scholarly work. Rather, it is the intersection and interlocking nature—the mutual reciprocity—of these answers that matters. In this issue, and particularly in the pair of longer essays, we find a constellation of researchers, approaches, topics, and archives. Placing pressure on any one essay to critically engage Indigeneity in the eighteenth century in its entirety would miss the point not only of a special issue but also of the broader calls for engagement with the longstanding critical work of Indigenous Studies scholarship. We might look, then, to the broader cloth in which these essays and this issue are woven: to bibliographies which direct us to broader conversations in which the researchers are enmeshed; to the positioning of authors in institutional and Indigenous contexts; to those gorgeous points where individual pieces here speak to each other in ways that stitch together communities, texts, questions, and archives that are usually separated by contemporary disciplinary configurations as well as by empire-based and state-based networks. We can hold this special issue that foregrounds Indigeneity alongside similar volumes in journals that have overlapping interests in the period or topic.2 We can consider the likelihood that each of these pieces will move around so many Indigenous kitchen tables, desks, and social media messaging platforms as Indigenous scholarly...

Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color. By Lorgia García-Peña. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2022.

Lorgia García-Peña puts into one text the many conversations had by women of color, including me, in hushed voices in the hallways or offices of our institutions, with knowing, loving, and affirmative glances shared at meetings, and by way of informal mutual aid groups, coming together at kitchen tables. These are conversations that have helped faculty and students of color survive and thrive in spaces not built or imagined for us. García-Peña begins her book by naming this long history: “My writing comes from a place of deep gratitude and humility as I recognize all that I am as the result of a collective process of becoming that is informed by communal knowledge and shared imaginings” (p. 13).

Our Town, South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California

<i>Our Town</i>, South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California

Our Proud Past Is Prologue

Our Proud Past Is Prologue

Morning Connections: How do you support hospital staff working remotely during a global pandemic without providing 'staff support'?

When lockdown was announced in the United Kingdom, kitchen tables transformed into offices overnight, as many National Health Service (NHS) workers adapted to new ways of working from home. To respond to the developing situation, we established a programme of weekly ‘Connections’ meetings where staff could be together, remotely. This article describes the evolution of our Morning Connections and Oncology Connections virtual meetings, including the content of sessions, how they were evaluated and whether they met their intention to support colleagues during a particularly challenging time, both personally and professionally, for NHS staff.

The effectiveness of information interventions to improve domestic food safety among rural consumers

AbstractConsumer education on food handling behavior is regarded as an effective method to improve domestic food safety and prevent foodborne illness, but is usually overlooked in rural areas. Using a presurvey and two rounds of postsurveys targeted at rural consumers from China included in a randomized controlled trial, this study investigated the effectiveness of two information interventions—a leaflet with tips for best practices and the leaflet plus consumer education sessions conveyed by phone—and compared them with a control group. Cloth use behavior was the target in the trial and five specific aspects were evaluated: (1) whether the cloth was made of old clothes, (2) whether the one used to clean kitchen tables was also used to wash dishes, (3) whether it was hung to dry, (4) how it was disinfected, and (5) how long the cloth was used before being discarded. Firstly, consumers' behavior was scored by summing the above‐mentioned five behaviors. The results estimated using the difference‐in‐difference model showed that respondents in the leaflet‐only group improved to a greater extent than those in the control group, but their difference in progress was not statistically significant until the second round of the postsurvey. Respondents in the leaflet‐plus‐phone group were quicker to adopt suggested practices and made discernible improvements compared with those in the leaflet‐only group in the first round of the postsurvey, but the gap between these groups narrowed to statistically insignificant in the second round of the postsurvey. It was concluded that one consumer education session was effective and made a difference in the long term, whereas more education sessions produced normative behavior at faster rates, showing a significant improvement in the short term. Then, the study estimated the effectiveness of interventions on the five specific behaviors separately. The results were estimated using a probit difference‐in‐difference model and showed that the suggested behaviors with lower costs or a greater difference from past behaviors were more likely to be adopted by consumers. Consumer education facilitates proper food handling practices among rural households, which should be considered by policy makers.

Our Town, Shakespeare 70, Ewing, New Jersey

<i>Our Town</i>, Shakespeare 70, Ewing, New Jersey

A Pilot Program of Virtual Ergonomics Consults for Radiology Staff Working From Home.

In March 2020, social distancing measures and other safety concerns related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic meant that all possible personnel and radiologists in the Department of Radiology at our institution who could work from home needed to do so on short notice. Although most radiologists already had a home workstation, most were not individually ergonomically optimized. Previously, nonradiologist staff did not have the ability to work from home and scrambled to adapt. Consequently, many traded their multimonitor workstations, task chairs, and desks for laptops on sofas and kitchen tables.

Fructose and Mannose in Inborn Errors of Metabolism and Cancer.

History suggests that tasteful properties of sugar have been domesticated as far back as 8000 BCE. With origins in New Guinea, the cultivation of sugar quickly spread over centuries of conquest and trade. The product, which quickly integrated into common foods and onto kitchen tables, is sucrose, which is made up of glucose and fructose dimers. While sugar is commonly associated with flavor, there is a myriad of biochemical properties that explain how sugars as biological molecules function in physiological contexts. Substantial research and reviews have been done on the role of glucose in disease. This review aims to describe the role of its isomers, fructose and mannose, in the context of inborn errors of metabolism and other metabolic diseases, such as cancer. While structurally similar, fructose and mannose give rise to very differing biochemical properties and understanding these differences will guide the development of more effective therapies for metabolic disease. We will discuss pathophysiology linked to perturbations in fructose and mannose metabolism, diagnostic tools, and treatment options of the diseases.

From the Field to Dining Table: Pesticides Residues

This review article aims to present an overview of pesticide residue, focusing from the field to dining table and on the impact on health. This study also shows that an information campaign regarding pesticide use and food safety for farmers and consumers. The methodology is based on previous research, relevant studies, published and unpublished sources and authors' own experiences. The work is only a review-based study. Food is a more basic need of man than shelter and clothing. The public is concerned about the presence of pesticide residues in foods. Pesticide residues in foods, farmers’ exposure to pesticides, and environmental pollution are serious concerns in Nepal. Risks from pesticides are high because of the lack of knowledge of farmers, limited training and awareness on the safe production of food crops, the absence of an effective code of practices, alternatives to chemical pesticide and inadequate residue monitoring Increasing awareness regarding good nutrition through quality food is creating a rise in the demand for vegetables and fruits and other crops. Despite great demand for safe vegetables, the supply of vegetables labeled as safe or organic is still limited. As growers are in a hurry to sell their produce, they do not wait or abide by the waiting period. As a result, the pesticide residues, left to variable extent in the food materials after harvesting, are beyond the control of consumer and have deleterious effect on human health. The consumer must think twice before eating veggies and biting into that fruits. Pesticides in the field do show up on our dinner plates or onto our kitchen tables. These pesticides often end up on dinner table. Consumers are not aware of food safety. The concentration of pesticide residues in the vegetable crops from the IPM field was considerably lower, suggesting a greater ability of IPM systems to reduce the dietary risks from exposure to pesticides. However, this is an alarming situation.

Going Virtual: The 2021 State Legislative Session

The majority of the 2021 state legislative sessions have begun. As lawmakers consider and debate important policy proposals, they may find themselves seated not in the historic chambers of their respective state capitols but rather in their office chairs, at their kitchen tables, or on their porch swings. COVID-19 disrupted many aspects of life across the country, including the way lawmakers are legislating and the public is participating in the political process. State lawmakers are navigating the politically fraught waters of adopting public health measures for in-person events, and many legislators have amended antiquated chamber rules to move all or some lawmaking functions online.

Virtually hired: Why I can’t wait to meet my colleagues after working with them for six months

I interviewed for my dream academic librarian position in July 2020. I was thrilled beyond words to be hired as the nursing librarian for the University of San Diego in August 2020. Yes, August 2020. Yes, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I interviewed, was hired, and began working entirely on Zoom. It has been, and continues to be, a unique and strange experience.I have joined my new colleagues for committee meetings and faculty meetings. I have collaborated with them on our library’s newsletter and on our annual report. I have consulted with some of them on my LibGuides, my instructional videos, and my faculty’s database usage and interlibrary loan statistics. I have done all this sitting at my kitchen table, which, like many of our kitchen tables, has quickly morphed into my work area. I have yet to be in the physical presence of my new co-workers. I engage exclusively with their heads and torsos on my laptop screen. I do not know what kind of shoes any of them wear.

Constitutional Rights at the Kitchen Table: British Columbia Francophones and the Making of a Minority-Language Educational System

In a recent landmark decision, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the underfunding of British Columbia’s Conseil scolaire francophone constitutes a breach of Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees in matters of minority-language education. While this marked the end of a decade of judicial proceedings, this article situates the decision in a broader historical context by examining the struggle to develop French-language educational programs in BC. If the province did not experience the education crises that tore through other parts of Canada in the decades following Confederation, BC francophones seized on the growing acceptance of bilingualism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to fight for an education system catering to their linguistic and cultural aspirations. Shifting the scholarly focus from the constitutional negotiating tables at which sat politicians and high-level bureaucrats to the kitchen tables around which parent groups gathered to formulate their demands, this article traces the grassroots battle to bring French-language schools to the province with Canada’s highest rate of linguistic assimilation.