Past Course Offerings
Summer 2007
Comparative Studies 677.03: American Foodways: Folk Custom, Art, and Material CultureInstructor: Charley Camp
TR 01:30 - 05:30
CCN 17959-7
Folklorists often gravitate toward cultural expressions that are widely practiced and commonly considered to hold the "small" meanings of social gesture and custom as well as the "grand" meanings of identity, spirituality, and family. Foodways - the intersection of food and culture - is well-situated for the identification of the expressive dimensions of ordinary experience, and yields a wealth of both ethnographic detail and cross-cultural comparison. This course will examine the social and material culture of American foodways with eye for the field's precise location within the abiding concerns of appetite and taste and the power of food "events" to address our needs for nourishment in every sense of that term. Through fieldwork and autobiographical exercises, through social and material genres such as folk belief, ritual, custom, and architecture, students will explore the connectedness foodways provides for a unified, dynamic model of tradition.
