Anthropology of Food

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

"Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are". Quite possibly the most famous words in the entire history of food-writing, that phrase, issued by 19th-century epicure, politician, layer and gastronome, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, has never been truer than it is today. Food has always been closely linked to identity, but in the past three decades, it has also become the focus of a host of issues - everything from the industrialization of farming to the integration of immigrants - that reflect cultural, social, and even political values. In this course, we will look at the nexus between what you eat and who you are by focusing on food culture across the world, but by using most case studies from North Europa, South Europe and in the United States. Europe has a deeply-rooted culinary tradition that was shaped by geography, religion, and demographics. But in recent years each has also shot to the forefront of the gastronomic world, producing a distinctive kind of cutting-edge cuisine ('molecular gastronomy'; 'new Nordic' in Denmark) that has turned its chefs into celebrities and its restaurants into the object of international pilgrimage. We'll investigate how those transformations have come about, and what they have meant - culturally, economically, and even artistically - for the societies that produced them. Throughout the course, students will read documents from leading philosophers and anthropologist include Mary Douglas, Pierre Bourdieu, Ari Ariel, and Clifford Geertz. Then, they will apply their literary knowledge by constructing a written analysis of the theory behind Bourdieu's idea of cultural and economic capital, a series of written analyses on identity, nationalism, religion, and culture, and finally an in-depth essay on identity, morality, or nationalism based on an interview they conduct and supported by literature from the course.