Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Spanish/History (dual)

This thesis uses soup discourse as a vehicle to explore dimensions of class and hierarchies of taste in Mexican cookbooks and newspapers from 1830-1920. It contrasts soups with classic European roots, such as sopa de pan (bread soup), with New World soups, such as sopa de tortilla (tortilla soup) and chilaquiles (toasted tortillas in a soupy sauce made from chiles). I adopt a multi-disciplinary approach, combining quantitative methods in the digital humanities with qualitative techniques in history and literature. To produce this analysis, I draw from Pierre Bourdieu's work on distinction and social capital, Max Weber's ideas about modernization and rationalization, and Charles Tilly's notions of categorical inequality. Results demonstrate that soup plays a part in a complex drama of inclusion and exclusion as people socially construct themselves in print and culinary practice. Elites attempted to define respectable soups by what ingredients they used, and how they prepared, served, and consumed soup. Yet, at the same time, certain soups seemed to defy hierarchical categorization, and that is where this story begins.

Committee: Amílcar Challú (Committee Co-Chair); Francisco Cabanillas (Committee Co-Chair); Amy Robinson (Committee Member); Timothy Messer-Kruse (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Latin American History