FST 55 - Food in American Culture

(4 units)
Instructor

COURSE GOALS: The course is intended to familiarize students with relationship between food and culture; relationship between food and the social order; influences on eating habits and the tensions between them including identity, convenience, and responsibility; multiple disciplines and genres.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture 3-hours, discussion 1-hour.

EXPLANATION OF POTENTIAL COURSE OVERLAP: Cross listed with AMS 55 Food in American Culture

TOPICAL OUTLINE:

  • Introduction / What is Food?
  • Identity: community & hierarchy, manners and rituals, gender and the family, ethnicity & authenticity, culinary tourism
  • Convenience: making of the modern food system, meaning and power, social trends – product trends, processed food controversy, anxieties and scares
  • Responsibility and the Future of Food: future of food, access & insecurity, labor, obesity, food waste, future of food debate