Sub-Projects

Dr. Nina Mackert (Erfurt University)
This research project traces the career of the calorie in the USA between 1850 and 1930. It asks how the calorie emerged in metabolic experiments and dietary practices and unfolded as a technology of subjectivation. more

Stefanie Büttner (Erfurt University)
„Food is fundamental, fun, frightening, and far-reaching“, that is how Paul Rozin, an American scholar in psychology with strong interest in food, appropriately summarized the wide range of means a developing interdisciplinary field of Food Studies is concerned with when talking about food. Basically that alludes to this key term as a diverse, often neglected and nevertheless fruitful object of research on the one hand. On the other hand scholars interested in all sorts of food-related topics paradigmatically advocate for food as an analytical lens which enables fresh views on various contexts. Such a framework also structures the following project from a historiographic point of view. A strongly assumed interconnectedness of food, health and concepts of pleasure in relationship to both dietary and consumerist behavior ‘set the table’ from which American society during the 1970s and 1980s will be looked upon within this project. more

Laura-Elena Keck (University of Leipzig)
In the second half of the 19th century, German nutritional science – which soon took a leading role internationally – emerged and developed new nutritional norms. The consumption of meat was of central significance to discussions on the human metabolism: Around 1850 Justus von Liebig put forth his theory that animal protein provided the main source of muscular strength. This claim laid the foundations for a popular nutritional doctrine which propagated meat as being the most important source of energy – a discourse which lost little of its relevance in the subsequent decades. more

Stefan Offermann (University of Leipzig)
This project engages with transfer and entangled history approaches to examine the emergence of the US-American risk-factor model in both German states from the 1960’s to the 80’s. During the course of long-term population studies throughout the 1940’s, the concept of “risk-factor” was introduced by the new discipline of chronic disease epidemiology. Resulting from their statistical surveys, these new epidemiologists brought forth a large range of so-called “risk-factors” which had been previously unknown. Greasy food or a high cholesterol level, smoking and insufficient physical activity were regarded as the most important “risk-factors”. more

Tanja Robnik (LMU Munich)
This research project looks at bodies and body weight from an intersectional and transatlantic perspective. Asking how ‘the other’ emerges and becomes evident through German health- and obesity-discourses, we find the ‘fat American’ is a noticeable point of reference. more

Tristan Dohnt (LMU Munich)
The sub-project explores practices and logics of contemporary surveillance, control and optimization of the self in the areas of nutrition, fitness and health. The empirical focus is on the phenomenon „Quantified Self“ (QS). There, with the help of digital technology and corresponding practices of community formation, new forms of self-relations are being shaped, that rely heavily on the assumption of the body as shapeable raw material. more

Tae Jun Kimv (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf)
Within social epidemiological research, obesity is often analyzed under the framework of a causation hypothesis which argues that obesity, among other diseases, primary results from deprived living conditions. In this context, behavioral patterns as well as the knowledge about nutrition and health are seen as important possible explanatory factors. The latter is often perceived as an element of health literacy and considered a primary objective of public health interventions. more