Showing results by author "Ty Matejowsky" in All Categories

Risqué Business explores the rise and ongoing cultural reckoning of "breastaurants": sports bar-style restaurants like Hooters and Twin Peaks, which have long relied on the sexualized presentation of female servers to attract a mostly straight, male clientele. Ty Matejowsky, professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida, is uniquely positioned in America's foundational, breastaurant-saturated landscape. From this vantage, he offers a well-balanced account that draws on pop culture, media analysis, and contemporary gender politics.

Waffle House has long been touted as an icon of the American South. The restaurant's consistent foregrounding as a resonant symbol of regional character proves relevant for understanding much about the people, events, and foodways. Smothered and Covered: Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary is the first book to socioculturally assess the chain within the field of contemporary food studies. In this groundbreaking work, Ty Matejowsky argues that Waffle House's often beleaguered public persona is informed by various complexities and contradictions.