Special Subject: History
Opportunity for group study of special subject not listed in the regular History curriculum.
Fall 2014 · Food in American History
This course will explore food in modern American history as a story of industrialization and globalization. Lectures, readings, and discussions will emphasize the historical dimensions of—and debates about—slave plantations and factory farm labor; industrial processing and technologies of food preservation; the political economy and ecology of global commodity chains; the vagaries of nutritional science; food restrictions and reform movements; food surpluses and famines; cooking traditions and innovations; the emergence of restaurants, supermarkets, fast food, and slow food. The core concern of the course will be to understand the increasingly pervasive influence of the American model of food production and consumption patterns.
Readings
- Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness & Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1986, or newer edition. ISBN: 9780140092332.
- White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. Hill and Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832.
- SES#: 1 · TOPICS: Introduction · READINGS: [P] Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1986. ISBN: 9780140092332.
- [S] McNeill, J.R. and McNeill, William H. “Shifting to Food Production, 11,000–3,000 Years Ago.” In The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History . W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. ISBN: 9780393051797.
- [S] Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1986. ISBN: 9780140092332.
- [S] Wilkinson, Alec. Big Sugar: Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida . Akfred A. Knopf, 1989, pp. 3–19. ISBN: 9780394573120.
- [P] Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle . Signet, 1906, pp. vi-x and 26–42. ISBN: 9780553212457. [2002 Modern Library]
- [P] Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History . Oxford University Press, 1948, pp. 169–208 and 209–46.
- [S] Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave . Basic Books, 1983. ISBN: 9780465047314.
- [S] Pursell, Carroll. Chapter 4 in A Companion to American Technology . Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. ISBN: 9781405179942.
- [S] Brumberg, Joan Jacobs*.* Chapter 3 in Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa . Plume, 1989. ISBN: 9780452263277.
- [P] United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook. The Yearbook of Agriculture . U. S. Goverment Printing Office, 1968.
- SES#: 8 · TOPICS: Individual Meetings to Discuss Paper Proposal · READINGS: No new readings assigned.
- [P] Berolzheimer, Ruth. The Greater American Cookbook . Culinary Arts Institute, 1940.
- [S] White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River . Hill and Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832.
- [S] Scholliers, Peter. “Novelty and Tradition: The New Landscape for Gastronomy.” In Food: The History of Taste . Edited by Paul Freedman. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780520254763.
- SES#: 14 · TOPICS: Potluck · READINGS: No new readings assigned.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: Permission of instructor U (Spring) 3-0-9 units Can be repeated for credit.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2014
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.