Cooking the Home: An Ethnographic Account of Home Cooking in a Bangladeshi Diaspora

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the cultural role of home cooking in a Bangladeshi diaspora community based in the midwestern United States. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, including participant-observation, in-depth unstructured interviews, and autoethnographic experiences, it explores the impact of home cooking on self-identification among Bengali immigrants in the United States, the interlacing discourses of cultural preservation and incorporation, and the impacts of COVID-19 on ethnic foodscapes. This research was approved by the Princeton University Institutional Review Board.