Fall 2009 - Syllabus
Tuesday 4:00pm to 6:30pm
Class Location: Xavier Hall 117
Cindy Ott, PhD
email: cott3@slu.edu
office location & hours:
Thursday 1:00-4:00 & by appt
ASTD 693-01: Edibles are Good to Think with: America Food & Culture
Food is more than something we eat. Finding food is a basic human necessity but making food choices
is more complex. Eating is biological and cultural, personal and political. Although we might lose some
of the connections when we revamp, repackage, and consume a product of nature, we, nevertheless,
connect ourselves to a particular country, region, landscape, economy, and producer. In turn, we also
link ourselves to other consumers, their ways of life and their values. This class will study culture
through food production and consumption, investigating American foodways through themes such as
labor, environment, gender, ethnicity, globalization, identity and power. We will analyze scholarly and
popular works that approach food through the lens of semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism,
revisionist history, and Marxism, and ones that celebrate the pleasures of cooking and eating food. The
course’s goal is to teach students about the meaning of food and how the simple act of eating can reveal
interconnections among so many diverse aspects of society and the environment. Another goal is to
introduce students to foodways as a fun, accessible yet deeply penetrating tool they can add to their
methodological approaches for studying history and cultures. And, finally, as a readings class, by its
completion students will be well-versed in major approaches and works in the diverse field of food
studies.
WEEK 1:
Aug 25: Introduction
Course Overview: Do you know where your food comes from?
WEEK 2:
Sep 1: Food as Myth & Symbol
Reading:
-Roland Barthes, “Towards a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption,” Carole Counihan
and Penny Van Esterik, Food and Culture: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1979), pp. 20-27.
-Roland Barthes, “Wine and Milk,” “Steak and Chips,” and Ornamental Cookery,” in Mythologies (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1957), pp. 58-61, pp. 62-64 & pp, 78-80.
-Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating,” in Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke, Cooking, Eating,
Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992),
pp. 374-379.
-Catherine Belsey, Post-Structuralism: A Very Short Introduction (NY: Oxford, 2002), pp. 47.
WEEK 3: Food and Structuralism
Sep 8:
Readings:
Claude Levi-Strauss, “Overture” and “Fugue in the Fives Senses,” in The Raw and the Cooked
(NY: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 1-29 and pp. 147-163
-Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” Implicit Meanings (London: Routledge, 1975), pp. 249275.
-Phyllis Passariello, “Anomalies, Analogies, and Sacred Profanities: Mary Douglas on Food and
Culture, 1957-1989,” Food and Foodways 4(1) (1990), pp. 53-71.
-Pierre Bourdieu, “Introduction” & “The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles,” in Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (NY: Routledge, 1986; org. 1979), pp. 1-7 &
pp. 169-225
WEEK 4: Food, Commerce and Power
Sep15:
Readings:
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (NY: Viking, 1985)
WEEK 5: Food and Revisionist History
Sep 22:
Readings:
James E. McWilliams, Revolution in Eating: How the Quest fro Food Shaped America (NY:
Coumbia University Press, 2005)
WEEK 6: Food & Identity
Sep 29:
Readings:
Williams-Forseth, Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food and Power
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
WEEK 7: Food & Labor: Factory
Oct 6:
Readings:
-Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
-Sigfried Gideon, “Mechanization and Organic Substance: Bread” in Mechanization Takes
Command (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), pp. 169-208.
Film excerpt: “Modern Times,” 1936
WEEK 8: Food & Labor: Field
Oct 13:
Readings:
-Cindy Hahamovitch, Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of
Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
WEEK 9: Food & Morality
Oct 20: Eating Meat
Reading:
-Roger Horowitz, ed, Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)
-Peter Singer, “Becoming a Vegetarian,” in Animal Liberation (New York: Random House,
1990), pp. 159-183.
-Laura Fraser, “Why I Stopped Being a Vegetarian,” in Holly Hughes, ed., Best Food Writing
2000 (New York: Marlowe & Co, 2000), p. 318-322.
WEEK 10: Women on Food
Oct 27:
Readings:
-MLK Fisher, “Consider the Oyster,” in The Art of Eating (NY: Macmillan, 1937), pp. 125-184.
-Margaret Visser, “What Shalle We Have for Dinner?,” Much Depends on Dinner (NY:
HarpersCollins, 1986), pp. 11-21.
-Barbara Kingsolver, “Called Home,” Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (NY:
HarpersCollins, 2007), pp. 1-22.
-Joan Reardon, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking: A Near Classic or a Near Miss,”
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (Summer 2005), pp. 62-72.
-Sharon Hudgins, “A Conversation with Julia Child, Spring 1984), Gastronomica: The Journal
of Food and Culture (Summer 2005), pp. 104-108.
-Michael Pollan, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” The New York Times (Aug 2, 2009).
(nytimes.com)
-watch an episode of Julia Child on youtube
WEEK 11: Food and Counterculture
Nov 3:
Reading:
Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry
(revised ed., Ithaca: Pantheon Books, 1993)
WEEK 12: Organic Food
Nov 10:
Reading:
Julie Gutman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004)
WEEK 13: Food and Environment
Nov 17:
Reading:
Richard Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the
Tropical World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)
WEEK 14: Food Politics & Health
Nov 24:
Reading:
Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
WEEK 15: Defining Food in Modern Times
Dec 1:
Reading:
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (New York: Viking, 2008)
Fall 2009
HIST 693.01: American Food & Culture
Cindy Ott
Course Requirements
Grading:
20% - Food analysis
20% - Book review
20% - Food image analysis
40% - Historiographical essay
Assignments include a 750-word food analysis and oral presentation, a 750-word book review
and discussion, a 750-word food image analysis and oral presentation, and a 3500- to 4000-word
historiographical essay. Due dates vary depending on the day the student presents the material
except for the historiographical essay, which are all due on December 8. We will set up a
schedule of presentations the first day of class.
For the 750-word food analysis, you will analyze an article of food as a form of material culture
by examining it in terms of the ideological and physical connections embedded in it. In the
paper, you will make a focused argument about some aspect of its larger meanings. You should
approach the food as a primary source for understanding some aspect of society, culture, and the
environment, and the links among them. Think about what stories the food joins together that
might be hidden or more obscure in other sources. You might explore its origins, the sources of
its ingredients and its preparation style. What role or functions has the food served besides
sating appetites? What is its ethnic or cultural history? Its environmental history? What does its
meanings have to do with where or how the food was produced or procured? If there isn’t much
correlation between the sources of the ingredients and its meanings, how might you analyze that
discrepancy? How does the experience of preparing it and/or consuming affect its meanings?
The purpose of this short assignment is to have you examine food as an expression of identity, to
think deeply about food as a window into culture and the interrelationships among the places and
people that produce and consume it. You will bring in the food to class when you present your
paper.
For the 750-word food image analysis, you will critique a visual representation of a food or a
food tradition. You may analyze a work of art (including a painting, sculpture or photograph), a
popular illustration (such as an advertisement, a TV commercial, or packaging). In the essay,
you will make an argument about class, ethnicity, age, and gender uncovered by your close
reading. You will bring the image to class the day of your presentation.
During another class session, you will also bring in another image that you think is provocative
and lead a class discussion about it.
For the 750-word book review, you will assess the themes, arguments, methods, and style of
one of the books in the syllabus as if you were writing a review for publication in a scholarly
journal, such as the American Quarterly. You must create a main argument about the purpose
and usefulness of the book and provide only a short and minimal summary of its content. What
is the takeaway message of the book? Does the evidence support it? Who is it useful to? What
disciplines does it draw from?
For the 3500- to 4000-word historiographical essay, you will research and write a
historiography for a particular theme of your choice in food studies. Topics may include, for
example, industrial agriculture, labor, urban gardens, ethnicity, food and religion, sweetness as a
metaphor, meat and masculinity. You will consult with me to prepare a reading list for this
paper. You will be expected to include at least five books besides those assigned in class. In the
essay, you should assess the key themes, arguments, sources, and methodologies of the books.
The book list is due October 13; we will set up a meeting to discuss it soon after. The first draft
is due November 17; the final draft is due December 8.
Grading of the papers is based on the level of analysis, breadth of materials consulted, and
clarity of writing.
As always, I really look forward to working with you!