Course Schedule and Calendar of Assignments:

Week 1 Introduction: Studying Food & Culture

"Food touches everything. Food is the foundation of every economy. It is a central pawn in political strategies of states and households. Food marks social differences, boundaries, bonds, and contradictions. Eating is an endlessly evolving enactment of gender, family and community relationships. In this class, we see how food-sharing creates solidarity, and how food scarcity damages the human community and the human spirit. We see how men and women design themselves differently though their foodways, and how women across cultures so often speak through food and appetite. We examine some of the meanings of eating fasting, being fat, and being thin, and we show their links to cultural images of masculinity and femininity. Food is life, and life can be studied and understood through food. Food is both a scholarly concern and a real-life concern. Because food crosses so many conceptual boundaries, it must be interpreted from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives." - from Food & Culture: A Reader

Readings: Short excerpts & visual texts provided in class [See texts and images online]
Media Excerpts: from Goodfellas Dir. Martin Scorsese; from The Age of Innocence Dir. Martin Scorsese

Week 2 Food as Symbol
Readings: "What Do we Eat" Donna Gabaccia (FUSA)
["The Changing Significance of Food," Margaret Mead (FaC)]
"Toward A Pscyhosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption" Roland Barthes (FaC)

Extras: * Sugartime clip from the McGuire Sisters, 1958 No. 1 Song
* Mo Paczki (Mo Rocca does Paczki Day in Hamtramck, CBS News)

Week 3 Of Kitchens and Cookbooks: Labor, Gender and Foodways
Readings: "Conflict and Deference" Marjorie Devault (FaC)
HANDOUT: "Hunger as Ideology" Susan Bordo (EC)
"Who Deserves a Break Today? Fast Food, Cultural Rituals and Women's Place" Kate Kane (FUSA)

Extras: * Andrew Sisters Video of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

Week 4 Food, Body and Culture: Appetite and Voice
Readings: "The Appetite as Voice" Joan Jacobs Brumberg (FaC)
"Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization of Culture" Susan Bordo (FaC)
"A Way outa No Way": Eating Problems among African American, Latina and White Women" Becky Wangsgaard Thompson (FUSA)
Media Excerpts: Slim Hopes (MEF); Frontline: Fat (PBS)

Week 5 Food, Body and Culture: Appetite and Voice
Readings: "Fast, Feast and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women" Caroline Walker Bynum (Fac)
"The Passover Seder: Ritual Dynamics, Foodways, and Family Folklore" Sharon R. Sherman (FUSA)
"The Origins of Soul Food in Black Urban Identity: Chicago, 1915-1947" Tracey N. Poe
Media Excerpt: Doreen Haffner's United Tastes of America

Week 6 Food and National Identity: U.S. Nationalism
Readings: "Eating American" Sidney Mintz (FUSA)
"The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality," Janet Siskind (FUSA)
"The American Response to Italian Food 1880-1930" Harvey Levenstein (FUSA)
Media Excerpts: Big Night (Stanley Tucci); United Tastes of America (Doreen Haffner)
Due: Proposed Seminar Paper Topics Submitted Today

Week 7 Food and National Identity: The Real Thing: Cola and Americanism
Readings: "Consumer Culture and Participatory Democracy: The Story of Coca-Cola During
World War II" Mark Weiner (FUSA)
"Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi: The nutritional consequences of hybrid cuisines in Mexico" (CPoFE)
Eric Schlosser Fast Food Nation: Chapter 2 "Your Trusted Friends"
Media Excerpts: Chapter 19 of The Corporation (Dir. M. Akbar & J. Abbott, 2004)
Chapter of Dr. Strangelove (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Week 8 Food & Globalization: Mc Politics
Readings: Eric Schlosser Fast Food Nation Chapter 1
"Of Hamburger & Social Space: Consuming McDonald's in Beijing" (CPoFE)
"Domesticating the French Fry: McDonald's and Consumerism in Moscow" (CPoFE)
Media Excerpt: McLibel

Week 9 Cuisine in Global Cinema: Examining Babette's Feast (Dir. Gabriel Axel, 1988)

Week 10 Food & Globalization: Class & Cuisine
Readings:
"Time Sugar and Sweetness" Sidney Mintz (F & C)
"How Sushi Went Global"(CPoFE)
"The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States" (CPoFE)
HANDOUT/PDF: Leigh Novak "Starbucks in America"
Media Excerpts: The Sopranos (HBO)

Week 11 Food & Globalization: Feeding Children
Readings: "Children's Food and Islamic Dietary Restrictions" (CPoFE)
"Globalized Childhood: Kentucky Fried Chicken in Beijing" (CPoFE)
"Does Lunch Matter?" Gwen Butkus online at CULTURAL LANDSCAPES Vol. 1, pp. 34-49
Handout: Marion Nestle, "Pushing Soft Drinks: Pouring Rights" (Ch 9 of Food Politics)
Media Excerpts: Supersize Me (Morgan Spurlock) (Chapter 13, Schlosser Interview)
Captive Audience: Advertising Invades the Classroom (MEF)
"Kids & Fresh Food:" Except from The Future of Food (Ch 5 Disc 2)

Week 12 The Political Economy of Food & Drink: The Politics of Hunger
Readings: "Hunger Malnutrition and Poverty in the Contemporary US" Janet M. Fichen (FaC)
"Beyond the Myth of Hunger: What Can we Do?" Frances M. Lappe and Joseph Collins (FaC)
"Food Hunger and the State"(CPoFE)
Handout:"The World is Fat" Barry M. Popkin Scientific American Vol. 297 No. 3
Handout: "Still Hungry" Per Pinstrup-Andersen & Fuzhi Cheng Scientific Am Vol. 297 No. 3
Media Excerpt: The Future of Food Dir. Deborah Koons Garcia

Week 13 The Political Economy of Food & Drink: The Politics of Water
Readings: Online: Water & Development
More Links & Online Resources on Global Water Crisis
Blue Planet Project Resources / Film Lists / Right to Water
Media Excerpts: Ch.18 of The Corporation (Dir. M. Akbar & J. Abbott, 2004)
Thirst (Snitow Kaufman Productions)

Coming in 2009 Water First Dir. Amy Hart (Film's Website) / World Without Water BBC /
FLOW: For Love of Water Dir. Irena Salina (Film Wesbite) / Blue Gold: Life for Sale Dir. Sam Bozzo (Film Website) / View Video Clip of FLOW: For Love of Water
(More Clips Online)
Final Exam Study Guide distributed today

Week 14 / Food & Culture Seminar Research
Seminar Papers Presented & Discussed
Due Date: Group 1 Seminar Papers

Week 15 / Food & Culture Seminar Research
Due Date: Group 2 Seminar Papers
Due Date: Final Examination due at Class meeting

Weekly Class Meeting Agenda

The typical weekly seminar meeting will be structured with the following agenda:

I. Class Business
II. Student Recipe Presentations
III. Reading Analysis, Part One
IV. Student Annotated Bibilography Presentations
V. Reading Analysis, Part Two
VI. Screening Analysis

Note: The final two weeks of the course will consist entirely of student-run seminar sessions in which the class members will present their seminar research papers in detail. The entire class will respond and discuss.

© 2006 - Ann Hetzel Gunkel
agunkel@colum.edu