Food&Culture

Food and Culture

Coming soon to a classroom near you!
(most likely Spring 2006)

Syllabus

Course Description & Objectives

This course will explore the relationship between food and culture, suggesting that a study of food and its production, distribution and consumption, its symbolism and history, its implications for health and well-being, its control in political struggles and more offer a particular means by which to approach the study of culture and society. The course will be divided into four (somewhat overlapping) sections: The meanings of food, food in history, globalizing food, and food in politics/politics in food. In each section, attention will be paid to the implications of food and eating practices for members of different races & ethnic groups, genders and classes, covering such topics as fasting, famine, body image and eating disorders, the emergence of the food service industry, the genetic engineering of food, and so on.

This course aims to (1) understand ethnographic approaches to food as an integrative means by which to study culture; (2) explore the ways in which “food” practices both reflect and refract social inequities; (3) explore the meanings and symbolic frameworks that food indexes or elaborates.

Library & Academic Resources	Museum resources & online exhibits	Journals, Associations, Networks	Other pages of interest
World Food Habits Bibliography English-language sources for the anthropological study of diet and nutrition collected by Robert Dirks of Illinois State University.	Still Cookin' by the Fireside: African Americans in Food Service A website that investigates the role that food service provider played in the African American community. From the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian.	Anthropology of Food (AOF) is a peer reviewed bi-lingual academic web journal in French and English. It aims to publish results of research in Sociology and Anthropology of Food and is published by a network of European academic researchers sharing a common intellectual interest in the social science of food.	Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages
Center for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University (Toronto)	Foods of the World: Section of the Minnesota State University EMuseum	Slow Food An International organization aimed to "protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life."	The Global Gastronomer
Mexican Cuisine (Universidad de Guadelajara, Mexico)	Museum of Beverage Containers	eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Site “dedicated to increasing awareness and knowledge of the arts of cooking, eating and drinking, as well as the literature of food and drink.”
Insects as Human Food (Microlivestock), Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet, Entomology.	Gallery of Regretable Food	Association for the Study of Food and Society
Food Reference Website, Prepared by James T. Ehler	The Burnt Food Museum (cebrating the art of culinary disaster)	Foodworks International (Austin, TX)
The Food Timeline, Morris County Library, ed. Lynne Oliver	Family Indigestion: An Illustrated collection of ingeneous dishes from the 50s, 60s and 70s.	Organic Consumers Association
Eating Disorders, Disordered Culture (UC Davis)	The New York Food Museum	Food Safety Network: Safe food from farm to fork (Canada)
		The Center for Food Safety (CA)
		Seafood Watch (Monterrey Bay Aquarium)