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Academic Year 2005/2006

Culinary Scapes: Food and Race in Asian America
AMST 343 SP

This course is a comparative study of narratives of food, nation and community in Asian American cultural production. Throughout the course, we will grapple with a series of questions to provide us with ways to understand how food is inextricably linked with race and ethnicity in Asian America. Why do people always think about Asian food when they think about Asians, and how do we understand the complicated question that seems to burn on everyone's lips, "Do Asians really eat dogs?" Because Asian American foodways feature in films, fiction and enthnographic studies, we will look at a range of different forms of cultural production as a way to explore how individual authors and communities define their ethnic/racial and gendered identities in a culinary context, and we will also look at ways that food provides different forms of sustenance--psychic, emotional, monetary to different communities and how that is thematized in cultural production. Readings in the course will be juxtaposed with theoretical work on the consumption and production of food.

MAJOR READINGS

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA AMST    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006

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