Food, Identity, and Power Cross-Culturally

Food sustains not only bodies, but national, ethnic, and social identities as well.  Notions of order and transgression, nature and culture, have long affected what people eat and how they do it.  Using interdisciplinary approaches, we will examine the practices and politics of food and eating in a range of regions.  How does eating, this most basic and universal of human practices, both reflect difference and create it?  How are food systems, symbolic and “real," linked to national and international politics?  Finally, how are contemporary food practices influenced by “modernization” and “globalization”? Students will examine these questions through analytical papers and individual projects. 3 hrs. sem.