Feminist Food

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The goal of this class is to think philosophically together about a variety of food-related issues in a way informed by feminist perspectives. What we eat, how much we eat, how we think about the relationships between food and eating on the one hand and, on the other hand, health, beauty, cultural traditions, care for nonhuman animals, respect for agricultural workers, and concern for the environment—all of these are significantly impacted by social norms and power structures involving gender, race, and class. In recent decades philosophers have given a lot of thought to these topics. Feminists have also given a lot of thought to beauty ideals and body norms for women and their relationships to diet culture and disordered eating, and questions about how gender, race, and class affect what we eat, how we eat, and what we think of as healthy eating. All of these issues and more are among the topics to be explored in this class.