Eleanor (Elly) Barnett

University of Cambridge, Facuty of History, Graduate Student

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I am a cultural historian of food, with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. My research uses food as a particularly engaging and enlightening lens through which to access the lives and values of ordinary people in the past.

My doctoral research explored the role of food in the religious divisions between Protestants and Catholics in the Reformations.

I research more widely in the field of food history, having most recently worked with the IHR and the Museum of Youth Culture (London) on a project that looked at the centrality of fast food to emergent youth culture in the late 20th century. I have also published several chapters in the edited collection, Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500-1800 (2019), which accompanied the acclaimed exhibition of the same name at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

As @historyeats on Instagram, I share food history stories, artworks, and recipes to a large international community of followers. I am cofounder of Cambridge Body and Food Histories group, and currently a convenor of the the IHR’s Food History Seminar.
Supervisors: Professor Craig Muldrew and Professor Ulinka Rublack

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Judith L Green

University of California, Santa Barbara

E. Wayne Ross

University of British Columbia

Osman GÜLDEMİR

Anadolu University

Alejandra B Osorio

Wellesley College

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Giulia Sissa

Ucla

Florin Curta

University of Florida

Michaela Valente

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma

George Lawson

The Australian National University

Carole Cusack

The University of Sydney

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Papers by Eleanor (Elly) Barnett

Food and Religious Identities in the Venetian Inquisition, ca. 1560–ca. 1640

Renaissance Quarterley, 2021

Through Venetian Inquisition trials relating to Protestantism, witchcraft, and Judaism, this arti... more Through Venetian Inquisition trials relating to Protestantism, witchcraft, and Judaism, this article illuminates the centrality of food and eating practices to religious identity construction. The Holy Office used food to assert its model of post-Tridentine piety and the boundaries between Catholics and the non-Catholic populations in the city. These trial records concurrently act as access points to the experiences and beliefs—to the lived religion—of ordinary people living and working in Venice from 1560 to 1640. The article therefore offers new insight into the workings and impacts of the Counter-Reformation.

REFORMING FOOD AND EATING IN PROTESTANT ENGLAND, c. 1560–c. 1640

The Historical Journal

As the field of food history has come to fruition in the last few decades, cultural historians of... more As the field of food history has come to fruition in the last few decades, cultural historians of early modern England have begun to recognize the significance of food and eating practices in the process of identity construction. Yet its effect on religious identities has yet to be written. This article illuminates a printed discourse in which Protestants laboured to define a new relationship to food and eating in light of the Reformation, from Elizabeth I's reign up until the Civil War. It is based on a wealth of religious tracts written by the clergy, alongside the work of physicians in the form of dietaries and regimens, which together highlight the close relationship between bodily and spiritual concerns. As a result of the theological changes of the Reformation, reformers sought to desacralize Catholic notions of holy food. However, by paying greater attention to the body, this article argues that eating continued to be a religiously significant act, which could both threat...

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Commemorative Funerary Monuments in Reformation Bristol c. 1490–1640

This article evaluates the impact of the English Reformation on the way in which people were comm... more This article evaluates the impact of the English Reformation on the way in which people were commemorated after death in Bristol c. 1490 to 1640. It adds the important case study of Bristol to a prospering historiography on Reformation commemoration. By studying both extant monuments and accounts of those since lost it is evidenced that pre-Reformation monuments belonged within an overarching practice of commemoration in which the dying requested prayers for their souls to pass through purgatory. It is argued that post-Reformation monuments reflect changes in religious beliefs but are no more 'secular' than they were prior to the Reformation. Social developments are also read from Reformation commemoration. Bristol's mercantile hegemony accelerated a nationwide change in elite values, from the importance of lineage to an emphasis on wealth and individual merit. The conclusion reflects upon the changed nature of remembrance as a result of the Reformation, from a request for intercessory prayer, to the internal remembrance of personal attributes.