Food and Identity

(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 Brillat-Savarin - has never been truer than it is today. Food has always been closely linked to identity, but in the past two 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 in Denmark, which has a deeply-rooted culinary tradition that was shaped by geography, religion, and demographics. But in recent years it has also shot to the forefront of the gastronomic world, producing a distinctive kind of cutting-edge cuisine ('new Nordic' ) 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 society that produced them. But we will not just be exploring the world of fine dining; we will also focus on other aspects of food culture in Denmark, such as the impact of industrial agriculture and the rise of alternatives; growing concerns about the relationship between diet and public health; and the impact of immigration on cuisine (and vice versa). In field studies in Copenhagen, we'll expand that exploration by talking to chefs, producers, and food historians about what Danes eat, and what it reveals about their culture.