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One Nation, Under Arugula: The Obama White House Kitchen Garden as Cultural Display and Pedagogy

Batra-Wells, Puja

Abstract Details

2010, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Popular Culture.
In this thesis, I seek to excavate the social, economic and cultural implications of the Obama kitchen garden. The analysis presented here views the Obama kitchen garden as a cultural display. It is a display that utilizes exhibitionary strategies in a museal tradition to organize public knowledge about healthful nutrition and ecological living. My central contention is that the White House garden functions like an artifact in a museum setting and that it represents a pedagogic project that seeks to improve the bio-political competencies of the national viewing public. Through a museological lens, I explore the rationality, rhetoric and repercussions proffered by the symbolism of this 1100 square foot vegetable patch. In the first chapter, I examine the logic behind the garden as a function of liberal governmentality. The second chapter looks back into the annals of American history to explore the mythic construction of the idea of the garden so as to render knowable how the symbolism of the Obama garden recalls an agrarian mythos. In the final chapter, I examine the class politics associated with the “grow your own food” movement with a view to expose discourses that destabilize the garden's pedagogic project.
Marilyn Motz, Ph.D (Committee Chair)
Lucy Long, Ph.D (Committee Member)
96 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Batra-Wells, P. (2010). One Nation, Under Arugula: The Obama White House Kitchen Garden as Cultural Display and Pedagogy [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276536935

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Batra-Wells, Puja. One Nation, Under Arugula: The Obama White House Kitchen Garden as Cultural Display and Pedagogy. 2010. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276536935.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Batra-Wells, Puja. "One Nation, Under Arugula: The Obama White House Kitchen Garden as Cultural Display and Pedagogy." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276536935

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)