Course
Outline and Reading List
Instructor: Dr. Christopher Fung
Office Hours and Phone: MW 10-11 or by appointment MP 301 544-1413
Email address: cfung@hpu.edu
Course Meeting Times and Lecture Theater: MWF: 11.50-12.45 pm UB 209
Course URL: http://www2.hpu.edu
click on "Fall 2006"
click on "Anthropology"
click on course no.
Course Description:
Food is one of the most fundamental yet heavily cultural factors in human existence. It is a source of nutrition, enjoyment, sociality and nurturing, yet it can also be a weapon, a way to divide and define the social group and a justification for slavery, conquest and exploitation.
Following the saying “You are what you eat, ” this course examines what the foodways of a particular culture can tell us about that group of people, and also the wyas in which food is used as a cultural symbol, an economic asset, an ethnic marker and a way of relating families, classes, nations and global communities. We will also look at the relationships between cooking and cuisine, food and religion, gender and food, the art of food and food and the human body. We will also be actively partaking in cuisines through visits to nearby restaurants.
Required Readings:
We will be using a reader, and three supplemental books as the main texts. Other subsidiary readings will be provided in class.
reader:
Counihan, Carole and Penny Van Esterik
1997 Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge. New York.
in syllabus as FAC
suppl. texts
Schlosser, Eric
2002 Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal. Perenial. New York.
Schwartz-Nobel, Loretta
2002 Growing Up Empty: How Federal Policies are Starving America’s Children. Houghton Mifflin. New York.
Watson, James L.(editor)
1997 Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia. Stanford University Press. Stanford, Ca.
in syllabus as GAE
Videos:
There will be some use of video in this class. Unfortunately not all are available at the LAC. However, you should be able to rent almost all of them through standard video rentals if you wish to see them again. The probable exceptions include “Yellow Earth” and “Red Sorghum” which are Chinese language movies and “301/302” which is a Korean language movie. The latter three should be available in stores which have good art-house movie selections.
Video titles to be used include:
Eat Drink, Man Woman; Tampopo; Soul Food; Like Water for Chocolate; Big Night;
Ongka’s Big Moka; 301/302; Babette’s Feast; Yellow Earth; and Red Sorghum .
Assessment:
Journals (40%).
Journals (one per week) must be handed in every two weeks. Failure to do so will result in an automatic grade of zero for that week’s journal
One essay :
first draft 20%, final draft 40%
You must meet with me for a
mandatory paper conference after you hand in the first draft. Failure to meet will result in your
grade being reduced by one letter grade.
Week 1 (9/6, 9/8 )
Introduction and key concepts
Reading: Counihan and Van Estrik (FAC Introduction);
movies: Soul Food, Tampopo
Discussing the Paper
Week 2 (9/11-9/15):
Food and food production –origins and modes of subsistence.
Reading: Schlosser: ch.1 , 2 and 6.
Edible and inedible: Food prohibitions in Muslim and Jewish practices
Reading: Douglas (FAC ch. 4); Gillette, 1999 ch 4
Week 3 (9/18-9/22)
The meaning of eating
Reading: Meigs (FAC Ch.8), Lee (xerox); movie: Like Water
For Chocolate
Food as celebration:
Sunday dinner, Thanksgiving and Spring Festival
Status foods
Reading: Mintz, 1996: ch 7.
Week 4 (9/25)
Religious fasting and feasting
Reading: Bynum (FAC ch. 12); Watson, 1982
9/27- 10/4
(no class, work on your essay drafts)
Week 5 (10/6)
Vegetarianism
Reading: Beardsworth and Keil, 1992
Week 6 (10/9-10/13)
Drinking and eating: the role of valued drink in a food system
Reading: Mintz (FAC ch. 25). movie: Red Sorghum
Food and nationalism
Reading: Ohnuki-Tierney, 1995;
Food as gift: Feasting and social status
Reading: Cooper, 1986 movie: Ongka’s Big Moka
Week 7 (10/16 – 10/20)
Fast food, food industrialization and class
Schlosser: Ch. 3, 6, 7, epilogue
Restaurant visit:
Food and class
Reading: Bourdieu, 1987 (pp. 177-208); Mennell (FAC 23)
Etiquette
Reading: Ohnuki-Tierney (GAE ch 5)
Week 8 (10/23 – 10/27)
Food and ethnicity
Reading: Hughes (FAC ch.20), Bak (GAE ch. 4). movie:
The Wedding Banquet
Food, gender, age and family
Reading: Devault (FAC ch.14)l movie: Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
Week 9 (10/30 – 11/3)
Food and the Body
movie: 301/302
Body image and eating disorders
Reading: Bordo (FAC ch. 17)
Week 10 (11/6-11/8):
Fast food and transnationalism
Reading: Watson (GAE Introduction and ch 2),
Food in Hawai‘i
Reading: TBA
11/11 Veterans’ Day/Armistice Day (no class)
Week 11 (11/13)
Cuisine and cooking
Reading: Mintz (ch 7 xerox); movie: Big Night
(11/15-11/20) No class
(work on your final drafts)
Weeks 13 - 14 (11/27 - 12/8)
Hunger , malnutrition and social policy
Reading: Fitchen (FAC ch. 27); Schwartz Nobel,
Capitalism and industrial food
Mintz (The Conquest of Honey by Sucrose") Schlosser
12/8 essay due