Re-heating the “First” Thanksgiving: the Thanksgiving episode as settler colonial narrative

Thanksgiving-themed episodes of cooking television open up questions about the interrelations of food, history, power, and culture. This study addresses such questions through textual and thematic analysis of 46 Thanksgiving-themed episodes of reality cooking competition programmes on US cable TV, exploring how the Thanksgiving episode operates as a site for the deployment of the culinary as a category by which the past is re/created. I argue that the Thanksgiving episode represents history through two frames: “tradition” and “reenactment.” Reading the Thanksgiving episode as a site of history's reconstruction illuminates popular media's involvement in the socio-historical-political machinery of contemporary life.