Global Food Studies: Ecocultural Sustainability and Diversity

FOOD ST M25 - Global Food Studies: Ecocultural Sustainability and Diversity

<p>(Same as Food Studies M25.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Food is culture—and has been a global force since the first formation of human societies. The intercontinental movement of tomatoes, sugarcane, rice, tobacco, and spices has directly influenced populations, economies, empires, and ecologies; while food today shapes our local and transnational experiences of nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, race, labor, and natural ecosystems. Interdisciplinary exploration of how people use food to imagine themselves as individuals and/or as part of a group as well as a wider globally-interconnected ecosystem. Identification of the importance of food in different eras and cultures by exploring the way nationality, race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc. influence global food choices or practices. Examination also of how a diverse range of cultures are maintained or transformed through food. Through the examination of scholarly research and global culinary traditions, exploration of the complex relationship that societies, nations, and ecosystems have with food. P/NP or letter grading.</p>

European Languages and Transcultural Studies

College of Letters and Science

General Education — Social Analysis (Society & Culture)

General Education — Historical Analysis (Society & Culture)

ELTS M25 - Global Food Studies: Ecocultural Sustainability and Diversity

Learn historically and culturally specific critical concepts and methods of cultural analysis, such as recognizing how different forms of cultural power and identity (included but not limited to gender, local/ regional/national identity, gender, race, sexuality, etc.) have shaped and influenced food practices.

Demonstrate cross-cultural awareness of world cultures and cultural/literary/cinematic/culinary expressions.

Enhance the ability to express how the diversity of food traditions and practices is a direct reflection of the diversity of the human experience.

Develop a critical understanding of the interconnections between food, cultural identity and ecological sustainability.

Develop interdisciplinary skills from the transcultural and transnational humanities to identify and analyze recurring patterns in multiple local, regional, national and global historical and cultural contexts.

Develop a critical understanding of how European colonial and postcolonial relationships to food and nature have shaped and continue to shape cultures and ecologies, and recognize how decolonial and sustainable practices can shift these unsustainable forms and relationships to our land, water and air.

Understand the ways in which historical and contemporary transnational cultural formations such as migrant, hybrid and diasporic identities shaped and continue to shape culinary/cultural and ecocultural practices and traditions.

General Catalog

Global Food Studies: Ecocultural Sustainability and Diversity

ELTS M25

5 units