FOOD, CULTURE & COMMUNICATION in Spring 2025 (CM5076)

This course introduces you to cultural and communication perspectives of food. A focus on food allows us to explore the construction and maintenance of social boundaries between inside and outside, private and public, individual and collective. The topic also offers an excellent window into questions of power, and the expression and maintenance of social hierarchies and inequalities. Among our goals: to compare and understand what food and drink mean, in a variety of contexts, both historical and contemporary; to consider how such meanings are entwined with questions of identity, both individual and collective; to critically explore how food and drink are bounded and shaped by relations of power; to look for answers to our time’s pressing concerns such as the sustainability of our food systems and the alienation of the modern consumer.
We approach the study of food in a holistic manner, with the intent of learning concepts that will enable us to think critically about modern processes and contemporary identities using a range of theoretical approaches. Our approach is also dialogical and collaborative in that we constantly try to understand different points of view. Third, we focus on ethnographic perspectives and methodologies in particular and examine meaning, power and change as they are expressed and negotiated in everyday contexts.