On Friday, October 2, NOG member Marta Olivi will defend her dissertation ‘Food That Matters: Food Figurations in Contemporary Anglophone Feminist Dystopias’. In her thesis, Olivi explores how contemporary feminist dystopian novels use food to illustrate how people are oppressed and how they resist this oppression.
In her thesis, Olivi analysed seven English dystopian novels published between 2008 and 2020, including works by Bernardine Evaristo, Louise O’Neill and Diane Cook. Her main point is that food in these books is more than just a metaphor. It actively influences how characters interact with one another, who they are, and whether change is possible.
In the novels examined by Olivi, food is, on the one hand, used to control women through hunger, strict diets, or restricted access to food. At the same time, characters use food to resist this oppression. By sharing, growing, preparing, or refusing food, they regain control and shape new ways of living together. Olivi calls this resistance ‘doing-with food’.
Olivi concludes that the novels use food to challenge classic Western divisions (body versus mind, nature versus culture, and matter versus meaning), by showing that food, for example, affects both body and mind, and both nature and culture. In this way, the books demonstrate that a more caring, more connected way of living together remains possible, even in a dystopian world.
Details PhD Defense
Date: Friday, October 2, 2026
Time: 12:15-13:15h.
Location: Hybrid. Live: Senate Hall, Utrecht University Hall, or click here to attend online.
Title: Food That Matters: Food Figurations in Contemporary Anglophone Feminist Dystopias
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Kathrin Thiele, Prof. Dr. Rita Monticelli, Dr. M.A. Górska, and Dr. S. Baiesi
