Humanities Center

2015-2016 Seminar: Food and Culture

Facilitator: Laura Goering, Professor of Russian

In The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “The pleasure of the table belongs to all ages, to all conditions, to all countries, and to all areas; it mingles with all other pleasures, and remains at last to console us for their departure.” To Brillat-Saverin’s list, we might add “to all disciplines,” for there are few academic fields that do not in some way touch on the study of food. The topics of scholarly inquiry are many and varied—from culinary history to food security, from global foodways to depictions of food in art, from food rituals and taboos to diet and public health—yet all share a fundamental concern with food and culture.

As Massimo Montanari reminds us, while rooted in biological necessity, food has no meaning outside the sphere of human activity. In its production, preparation and consumption, “food is culture.” This seminar seeks to bring together scholars from disparate fields in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, with a goal of bringing a multidisciplinary perspective to the study of food in all its guises.  

The basic premise of this year’s Seminar is that even highly specialized approaches to the study of food can be enhanced by conversation and engagement with scholars in other fields. What these conversations will look like will depend largely on the interests and expertise of the participants.

Imagine, for example, the possibilities for intellectual engagement between these hypothetical pairings:

• A scholar of public health and a sociologist who studies food and identity in immigrant communities; an advocate of sustainable agriculture and a culinary historian who examines the interactions of national cuisines over time
• An economist who analyzes global foodways and a scholar interested in local cultural meanings of food production and consumption
• A scholar of religion who studies food taboos and a political scientist interested in food security in developing nations.

By reading broadly outside our own areas of expertise, we will also address a secondary goal of understanding the central issues, problems and contradictions in the nascent field of “food studies.”

Again this year the Humanities Center has collaborated with the Global Engagement Initiative to select a Seminar topic that has global implications. Indeed, from the migration and metamorphosis of national ethnic cuisines, to the benefits and perils of interconnected global foodways, to the collision of indigenous farming practices with external factors—everywhere we look in the world of food we find examples of “the flow of people, goods and capital, of ideas and images,” or, conversely, of cultural practices that “elude the discourses and networks of global flows.” The GEI grant will offer additional opportunities (guest speakers, links to Off-Campus Studies programs, field trips, etc.) for connecting the work of Seminar participants to the broader campus community.

We will begin by discussing a few seminal food studies texts such as Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history (1985), but ultimately the choice of readings will be guided by the specific interests and research projects of participants.

Included here is an abbreviated bibliography to give applicants a sense of the range of topics and authors that might be considered:

Theoretical approaches to the study of food and culture: E. N. Anderson, Everyone eats: understanding food and culture (2005); Roland Barthes, “Toward a psychosociology of contemporary food consumption” (1961); Massimo Montanari, Food is culture. Arts and traditions of the table (2006); Anna Meigs, “Food as a Cultural Construction” (1997).

Comparative historical studies of culinary practices: Jack Goody, Cooking, cuisine, and class: a study in comparative sociology (1982); Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas, eds. Curried cultures: globalization, food, and South Asia (2012); Peter Scholliers, Food, drink and identity: cooking, eating and drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages (2001); Richard Wragham, Catching fire: how cooking made us human (2009).

Global foodways: Theodore Bestor, “How sushi went global” (2000); Jennifer Clapp, Hunger in the balance: the new politics of international food aid (2012).

Diet, food safety and food politics: Warren James Belasco, Appetite for change: how the counterculture took on the food industry (2007); Marion Nestle, Food politics: how the food industry influences nutrition and health (2002); Heather Paxson, “Slow food in a fat society” (2005); Eric Schlosser, Fast food nation: the dark side of the all-American meal (2001).

Food and issues of race, gender and class: Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman, Cultivating food justice: race, class, and sustainability (2011); Patricia Allen and Carolyn Sachs, “Women and food chains: the gendered politics of food” (2012); Psyche A. Williams-Forson, Building houses out of chicken legs: Black women, food, and power (2006).

Food and identity: Arjun Appadurai, “How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India” (1988); Richard R. Wilk, Home cooking in the global village: Caribbean food from buccaneers to ecotourists (2006).

Physiology, diet and culture: Kristen Borré, “Seal blood, Inuit blood, and diet: a bicultural model of physiology and cultural identity” (1991); Gary Nabhan, Why some like it hot: food, genes, and cultural diversity (2004).

The Seminar will meet approximately every two weeks for the entire 2015-2016 academic year, but the format will be flexible enough to accommodate faculty members who will be on leave or leading an OCS program. Participants will also plan a symposium (panel, mini-conference, lecture series, exhibition, or major visiting speakers) for 2016-17. A $1000 book budget will be available to the group, and Seminar participants will receive $2000 for their participation. Staff members pursuing a relevant research project are encouraged to apply.

Approximately six to ten Faculty Research Fellows will be chosen by the Humanities Center Advisory Board in consultation with the Seminar Facilitator and the Directors of the Global Engagement Initiative.