SOC 242
Food and Society Spring 2014
Division II
This is not the current course catalog

The French critic Roland Barthes famously said that food is a system of communication. This multidisciplinary course is designed to introduce students to different ways of thinking about food through an exploration of the complex social and cultural rules that underlie food’s consumption. Because our food choices communicate who we are–or what we aspire to be–the study of food reveals how societies throughout the world construct difference, whether religious, ethnic, national, or racial. The class will also examine nutrition, hunger, ideals of desirability in body image, and visual representations of food in advertising and art. Probable readings include: primatologist Richard Wrangham on how cooking made us human; nutritionist Marion Nestle on food politics; R. Marie Griffith on the Christian diet movement; policy analyst Raj Patel on the global food system; Psyche A. Williams-Forson on black women, food, and power; journalist Michael Pollan on ethical food choices; philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer on taste; archaeologist Martin Jones on why humans share food; and sociologist Gary Alan Fine on the culture of restaurant work.