The purpose of this course is to explore the
complex interrelations between food and
culture, focusing on the questions of how
people in different world socio-historical
contexts learn and accept to eat and cook food
differently, and how the social purpose of food
consumption has changed hierarchically, spatially and
temporally, entailing different social and cultural
meanings. To this end, the course is organized around
two main axes: (i) the diffusion and transformation
of eating and cooking practices parallel to
world-historical changes, and (ii) food consumption patterns
and their relation to social hierarchies. Some
of the themes to be covered in this class are the
cultural and social significance of eating-out,
gendered aspects of food practices, the emergence
and evolution of "national" and "ethnic" cuisines, cultural
and social histories of certain food products such as
sugar, coffee and Coca-Cola, culinary transformations
and interactions across the world in a historical
perspective, homogenization of diets on a global
scale, and the historical development of rituals and
manners associated with food consumption.
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