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How and why do we humans “play” with the food we eat, and on which we depend for our lives, in so many different ways—creatively, profoundly, and consequentially?
This interdisciplinary course is dedicated to exploring the proposition that the act of eating, in human civilizations from ancient to contemporary, and all the processes associated with eating—including finding, making, enjoying, and talking about food; feasting and fasting; digestion and its expected consequences and effects—that all these constitute a culture, a complex system of shared practices, beliefs, and worldview that both reflects and “feeds into” the cultures of particular communities. To understand a people’s foodways (including what people like to eat or drink, and how they like to prepare it) is to gain insight into how they view themselves, interact with each other, and conceptualize their relationships with other communities. In this course we test the proposition that, when we humans eat or drink, whether we realize it or not, we are consuming, digesting, and ruminating (in both a literal and metaphorical sense!) with culture.