| Description: | If "you are what you eat", just why do you eat the way you do? This course considers the relationships between the multiple meanings of food and the acts of preparing and eating food, and further explores food and personal and social identity. Students will examine why different people make different food choices in their daily lives, why individuals from certain social classes will avoid or esteem particular foods, and in general how food serves as a factor in self-definition. Because a person's attitude toward food can reveal not just personal identity traits but a whole food ideology, this course will also analyze the role of food in the construction of ethnic identity, in the display of religious beliefs, and in the negotiation of gender roles. Students learn how cultures and values are transmitted and preserved through food. Through personal essays and the interdisciplinary secondary literature, students will be guided to analyze the complex and fascinating relationships between people and food, helping them to understand how cultures (including their own) ultimately determine all human food choices. |