Nourishing the Volk: Nutrition, Health, and National Belonging in Germany’s Long Great War

This event is organized by the NC German Studies Seminar and Workshop Series. For the most updated details and information on joining the event, please visit the NCGSWS website.

The talk examines Germany’s “long” Great War (1914-1924) through the lenses of food, health, and gender. Whereas most scholars have focused on how hunger and deprivation in war-time Germany contributed to social unrest and female politicization, this research focuses instead on how male nutritional scientists forged relationships with female philanthropists, women’s groups, and housewives’ organizations to re-shape national ideas about food and identity in the struggling German nation. Moreover, it shows how despite the demobilization of the nation’s (male) military soldiers in 1918, the ongoing resource scarcities in Germany between 1918-1923 necessitated the continuous mobilization of the nation’s “kitchen soldiers” during the often overlooked periods of occupation, humanitarian intervention, and national re-building.

Speaker: HEATHER R. PERRY I Associate Professor, UNC—Charlotte, Department of History

HEATHER PERRY is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her specialty is the history and culture of the First World War; however, she focuses more broadly on the study of German and European History, the History of Medicine and the Body, and the History of War and Society. Her recent publications include: the monograph Recycling the Disabled: Army, Medicine, and Modernity in WWI Germany (2014); and the volume Food, Culture and Identity in Germany’s Century of War, which she edited with Heather Merle Benbow (2019). Currently she works on a book project titled Feeding War: Nutrition, Health, and National Belonging in Germany, 1914-1924.

Moderation: KONRAD H. JARAUSCH I UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History

Co-Convener: UNC-Chapel Hill, Peace, War and Defense Curriculum