Course Schedule and Calendar of Assignments:
4 Oct. Week 1. 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
Pierre Bourdieu from Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
Media Excerpts: Scene from Goodfellas Dir. Martin Scorsese YouTube Clip of Dinner Scene
Scene from The Age of Innocence Dir. Martin Scorsese

11 Oct. Week 2 . Food as Symbol
Readings: "What Do we Eat" Donna Gabaccia (FUSA)
"The Changing Significance of Food," Margaret Mead (FaC)
"Toward A Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption" Roland Barthes (FaC)
Media Excerpt: TBA

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

25 Oct. Week 4. Food, Body and Culture: Appetite
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 Excerpt: Slim Hopes (MEF)
Due Date: Seminar Analytical Paper Topics Selected

1 Nov. NO CLASS – ALL SAINTS DAY HOLIDAY

8 Nov. Week 5 . Food, Body & Culture: 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
"The Origins of Soul Food in Black Urban Identity: Chicago, 1915-1947" Tracey N. Poe
Media Excerpt: United Tastes of America (Doreen Haffner)
Media Excerpt: Soul Food

15 Nov. Week 6. 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)

22 Nov. Week 7. 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)
"Thanksgiving: Expressing Group Identity" Richard Pillsbury
"The American Response to Italian Food 1880-1930" Harvey Levenstein (FUSA)
Media Excerpts: Big Night (Stanley Tucci); United Tastes of America (Doreen Haffner)

 29 Nov. 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)

6 Dec. Week 9. Food, Globalization & Class
Readings: "The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States" (CPoFE)
"Time Sugar and Sweetness" Sidney Mintz (F & C)
"The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States" (CPoFE)
Leigh Novak "Starbucks in America"
Media Excerpts: The Sopranos (HBO)

13 Dec. Week 10. Food & Globalization: Feeding Children
Readings: "Children's Food and Islamic Dietary Restrictions" (CPoFE)
"Globalized Childhood: Kentucky Fried Chicken in Beijing" (CPoFE)
"How Sushi Went Global"(CPoFE)

20 Dec. Week 11. Feeding Children: The Politics of Lunch
"Pushing Soft Drinks," Marion Nestle
"The Branding of Learning"
"Does Lunch Matter?" Gwen Butkus online at CULTURAL LANDSCAPES Vol. 1, pp. 34-49
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)

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

10 Jan. Week 13 . The Political Economy of Food & Drink: Water and Culture
Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit Vandana Shiva: Intro
Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit Vandana Shiva: Chapter One
Online Facts and info:
Facts from Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization Steven Solomon:
http://thewaterblog.wordpress.com/facts-about-water/
Sierra Club Online Resources: Water & Development
More Links & Online Resources on Global Water Crisis
Blue Planet Project Resources / Film Lists / Right to Water
Screening: Flow: How did a handful of corporations steal our water Dir. Irena Salina (2008)
Blue Gold: World Water Wars. Dir. Sam Bozzo (2009)
Note: Final Exam Study Guide distributed today

17 Jan. Week 14. Food & Culture Seminar Research
Seminar Papers Presented & Discussed; Final Examination due at Class meeting


© 2011 - Ann Hetzel Gunkel
agunkel@colum.edu