Unless otherwise noted, this OER Course Schedule
| Module/Dates | Topic | Readings/Tasks |
|---|---|---|
| Week #1- TU August 25, 2022 | Introduction to the course | Syllabus and course overview, requirements, expectations and goals. |
| Week #2 – TU Sept 6, 2022 | What is food? What is a cuisine? | Read: Mintz, & DuBois (2002); Cooper (1986); Douglas (1972) Respond to Forum Post Week #2 |
| Week #3- TU Sept 13, 2022 | Taste, the body, and eating | Read: Bourdieu (2005), Harris (1998), Wilson (2005) Respond to Forum Post Week #3 |
| Week #4- TU Sept 20, 2022 | Food & Social Justice | Read: Agyeman, Mathews, and Sobel (2017); Dun (2017) Watch: The Hidden Economy Behind NYC Street Vending- Respond to Forum Post Week #4 |
| Week #5- TU Oct 11, 2022 | Food and Language | Read: Light (2020); Cavanaugh & Riley (2017) Respond to Forum Post #5 |
| Week #6 – TU Oct 18, 2022 | Food, Health & Migration: The case of NAFTA and Mexico | Read: Galvez (2018). Listen to Cereijido “The NAFTA Diet” Podcast Respond to Forum Post Week #6 |
| Week #7 – TU Oct 25, 2022 | History, Anthropology, and Sugar: “A match made in heaven” | Read: Mintz (1986) Respond to Forum Post Week #7 |
| Week #8 – TU Nov 1, 2022 | Labor Organizing and Food: The case of Fast-food and service workers | Read: Lo & Koeing (2017), Saxena (2019), Renaldi (2020), Sainato (2022), Schoolov (2022) Watch The Hand that Feeds (2015) Respond to Forum Post Week #8 |
| Week #9 – TU Nov 8, 2022 | Case Study: Starbucks, consumption and caffeine | Read: Roseberry (1996), Tucker (2011), Brian (2009), Semple (2019) Watch Documentary Inside the World of High-End Coffee (2019) Respond to Forum Post Week #9 |
| Week #10 – TU Nov 15, 2022 | Food and Community Gardens: Two case studies – USA and New Zealand | Read: Reese (2017), Shimpo, Wesner and McWilliam (2019). Watch videos: ‘Couple turns abandoned lot into community garden’ (2020), ‘Community garden that brought hope to a favela’ (2022), ‘How Urban farming saved a Dallas community’ (2020) Respond to Forum Post Week #10 |
| Week #11– TU Nov 22, 2022 | Cookbooks, Identity and Nation | Read: Appadurai (1988), Folch (2008) & Zafar (2019) Respond to Forum Post Week #11 |
| Week #12– TU Nov 29, 2022 | Disposing food: ethnography of trash | Read: Read: Nagle (2017), and NYT News article (2020) Watch: What I discovered in NYC Trash (2013) Respond to Forum Week #12 |
| Week #13- TU Dec 6, 2022 | Indigeneity, and Food Sovereignty | Read: Lardeau, Healey & Ford (2011); Castellanos (2015) Respond to Forum Post Week #13 |
| Week #14– TU Dec 13, 2022 | Final Class | Reflections on the course, questions on final assignment, student feedback |
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Course Bibliography per week
Full citations of all readings, videos, audio etc. broken up by the week they should be read and/or watched and/or listened too.
Week #2 What is food? What is a cuisine?
- Douglas, Mary. “Deciphering a meal” Daedalus, 101(1): Myth, Symbol, and Culture. (Winter, 1972): 61-81.
- Cooper, Eugene. 1986. “Chinese Table Manners: You are how you eat” Human Organization, 45(2): 179-184.
Week #3 Taste, the body, and eating
- Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. “Taste of Luxury, Taste of Necessity” in The Taste Culture Reader, Edited by Carolyn Korsmeyer. New York: Berg. Pp. 72-78.
- Harris, Marvin. 1998. “Good to Think or Good to Eat?” in Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 13-18.
- Wilson, Margaret. 2005. “Indulgence” in Don Kulick and Anne Meneley (Eds.), Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession Ann Arbor: Penguin Press, 153-167.
Week #4 Food and Social Justice: Case Study – NYC street vendors
- Agyeman, Julian, Caitlin Mathews, and Hannah Sobel. “Introduction” in Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love. Edited by Julian Agyeman, Caitlin Mathews, and Hannah Sobel. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Pp. 1-20.
- Dun, Kathleen. 2017. “Decriminalizing Street Vending: Reform and Social Justice” in Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love. Edited by Julian Agyeman, Caitlin Mathews, and Hannah Sobel. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Pp. 47-66.
- Robbins, Christopher. “NYC Street Vendors Eagerly Anticipate City Expansion of Permits” Gothamist, January 27th, 2021.
https://youtu.be/NtJmakm1-zcWeek #5 Food & Language
- Light, Linda. 2020. “Language” in Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology. Ed. Nina Brown, Laura Tubelle de González, and Thomas McIlwraith.
- Riley, Kathleen C. and Jillian R. Cavanaugh. 2017. “Chapter 10: Food Talk: Studying Foodways and Language in Use Together,” in Food Culture: Anthropology, Linguistics and Food Studies, edited by Janet Chrzan, and John Brett, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2017.
Week #6 Food, Health, and Migration: The Case of NAFTA and Mexico
- Gálvez, Alyshia. 2018. “Introduction” in Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and The Destruction of Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 1-26
- Cereijido, Antonia. “The NAFTA Diet” NPR Latino USA Podcast February 15th, 2019 (listen below)
In 2006, Alyshia Gálvez, a professor and anthropologist at the City University of New York (CUNY), did a study on Mexican immigrant women in New York City. Surprisingly, she found that in spite of socioeconomic disadvantages, immigrant women boasted better than expected health and birth outcomes—a phenomenon that came to be known as the “immigrant paradox.” Anthropologists attributed this “paradox” to the idea that immigrants had grown up with healthier food systems and habits in Mexico than in the U.S.
However, in the last three decades, diabetes rates in Mexico have spiked, becoming the country’s top cause of death. So Dr. Gálvez, who is also an immigration scholar, set out to find out why health in Mexico had plummeted. She discovered what she believes is the most straightforward answer: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
In a conversation with Maria Hinojosa, Dr. Gálvez discusses her new book, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico, and takes us through the story of a deal that she says put the health of Mexicans up for sale. We learn what it is that made Mexican cuisine so healthy prior to NAFTA, how NAFTA was passed, and why people in small-town Mexico who used to purchase their food at a local market are now much more likely to visit the closest Walmart.
https://filmfreeway.com/1314729Week #7- History, Anthropology and Food: “A Match Made in Heaven”
- Mintz, Sidney W. 1986. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
Week #8 – Labor Organizing and Food: The case of Fast-food and service workers
- Lo, Joann and Biko Koeing. 2017. “Food Workers and Consumers Organizing Together for Food Justice” in The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action, Ed by Alison Alkon and Julie Guthman. Berkeley: University of California Press,. 133-156.
- Saxena, Jaya. “Food service is grueling work, so more and more workers are organizing” Eater, December 10th, 2019.
- Renaldi, Richard. “Faces of a Fast-Food Nation” The New Yorker, November 23rd, 2020.
- Sainato, Michael. “Starbucks workers hold strikes in at least 17 states amid union drive” The Guardian, August 11, 2022.
- Schoolov, Katie. Unions are forming at Starbucks, Apple and Google. Here’s why CNBC, August 5, 2022.
- Starbucks Workers United (n.d) Starbucks Workers United
- Anonymous. “The Hand That Feeds.” , directed by Anonymous, Bullfrog Films, 2015. Alexander Street. (1 hour 24 minutes)
Week #9 Case Study: Starbucks, consumption and caffeine
- Roseberry, W. (1996). “The rise of the yuppie coffees and the reimagination of class in the United States” American Anthropologist, 762-775.
- Tucker, Catherine. 2011. “Culture, Caffeine, and Coffee Shops” in Coffee Culture: Local Experiences, Global Connections. New York: Routledge. Pp. xii- xiii; 3-10.
- Simon, Brian. 2009. “Introducing the Starbucks Moment” in Everything But the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-20.
- Semple, Kirk. “Central American Farmers Head to the U.S., Fleeing Climate Change” The New York Times, April 13, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adCKCOCSGpgWeek #10- Food and Community Gardens: Two case studies – USA and New Zealand
- Reese, A.M. (2018), “We will not perish; we’re going to keep flourishing”. Race, Food Access, and Geographies of Self-Reliance. Antipode, 50: 407-424.
- Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee. (2013) HEAT – Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee.
- Shimpo, Naomi, Andreas Wesener and Wendy McWilliam. 2019. “How community gardens may contribute to community resilience following an earthquake” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 38: 124- 132.
https://youtu.be/gfCcI6_1iiAhttps://youtu.be/78W04nSpxSEhttps://youtu.be/gfCcI6_1iiAWeek #11- Cookbooks, Identity and Nation
- Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 30, no. 1, 1988, pp. 3–24. JSTOR.
- Folch, Christine. “Fine dining: Race in pre revolution Cuban cookbooks,” Latin American Research Review, 2008, 43(2): 205-223.
- Zafar, Rafia. 2019. “Chapter 7: The Negro Cooks Up His Past: Arturo Schomburg’s Uncompleted Cookbook,” in Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 79-90 (Available via BB)
Week #12- Disposing: an ethnography of trash
- Nagle, Robin. “The job is in the field: notes from municipal anthropology.” Journal of Business Anthropology 6, no. 1 (2017): 41-57.
- Barnard, Anne, Azi Paybarah and Jacob Meschke. What New York’s Trash Reveals About Life Under Lockdown New York Times, June 2, 2020.
Citation: Nagle, Robin (2013). What I discovered in New York City trash. (7:41 min) https://www.ted.com/talks/robin_nagle_what_i_discovered_in_new_york_city_trash
Week #13- Indigeneity, and Food Sovereignty
- Lardeau, M.P., G. Healey, and J. Ford. 2011. “The use of Photovoice to document and characterize the food security of users of community food programs in Iqaluit, Nunavut” Rural and Remote Health, 11(1680),
- Castellanos, M. Bianet (2015) “Idealizing Maya Culture: The Politics of Race, Indigeneity, and Immigration Among Maya Restaurant Owners in Southern California,” Diálogo: Vol. 18 : No. 2 , Article 7. (This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Latino Research at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Diálogo by an authorized editor of Via Sapientia)
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