HIST 4104 L11

Summer 2015
Mon-Tue-Wed-Thu 14pm

Thierry Rigogne

Food & Drink

in Modern Society
Interdisciplinary Capstone Seminar (ICC)

Course description

D
D
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rinking and eating are basic human needs. But they are much more: they are also activities that in every culture
and in every society, past and present, have been central to how individuals define themselves and interact with
each other. During this interdisciplinary capstone seminar, we will use variety of approaches to unravel the
social meanings of food and drink, and of eating and drinking through time.
uring our meetings, we will study the history of specific beverages and we will examine how food and drinks
have been consumed over time, not only in the home but also in public places. We will apply concepts, theories
and techniques developed in history, literary studies, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, philosophy, art history
and the sciences to read, that is, to contextualize and interpret, texts, documents and images.
hroughout the course, students will have the opportunity to approach issues and texts from a number of different
angles and from the perspective of various disciplines. By combining them, we will get a richer understanding of
the place that food and beverages, eating and drinking have occupied in our societies, and how it has changed
over time. The final paper will allow students to put these insights into practice.

Required readings
- Dan Jurafsky, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu (W. W. Norton, 2014). ISBN: 978-0393240832
- Sandra M. Gilbert, The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity (W. W. Norton, 2014). ISBN: 978-0393067651
The books are available in paperback or cheap hardcover editions. They are also available for purchase at the Fordham
University Bookstore.
All other reading materials will be available on the course website on Blackboard: http://fordham.blackboard.com/
Reference tools:
- William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style (online)
- The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press, 2010) (online through Library website)
- Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (University of Chicago Press, 2007)

Evaluation
Class Participation
Presentations
Personal Project
Final Paper (due on June 25)

30% of grade
15%
20%
35%

articipation (30%): You must attend all sessions and arrive fully prepared
to play an active role in this Seminar. This involves asking questions,
contributing to discussions, commenting on the ideas of others and
helping explore the problems at hand in a constructive manner.
Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class. Absences are excused only for medical reason, with advance
notification and proper documentation. Two unexcused absences will result in failing the course. If you arrive late, you will
be counted one-half absence.
resentation (15%): One or two students will introduce the readings briefly (in less than 20 minutes combined) at
the beginning of each session. They will synthesize (not summarize) the readings before proposing a series of
themes and questions for the class to discuss.
ersonal Project (20%): This rewards your creativity in adding to the class. You are encouraged to bring objects,
food or beverages (but no alcohol) for Show and Tell related to the weeks theme. You can complement your
presentation with relevant images (such as illustrations reproduced poorly in articles, artworks mentioned in
readings, or other images connected to the readings). You can also post articles, videos, songs, or blog entries on the class
website.

P
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aper (35%): The final paper will consist in an interdisciplinary exploration of a topic of your choosing (you can
pick any food, beverage or any eating or drinking practice in any time and place). You will submit a short (1paragraph) paper proposal to be emailed by 4 pm on ??, in which you will define your topic and the questions you
will address, you will list your main sources, documents and texts, and you will outline your methodology. Your paper
must include both a literary and a historical analysis of your sources, as well as a section in which you will reflect on the
two disciplines and how they relate to each other. The paper replaces the final exam and is due on the day of the final
exam, June 25, at 4 pm. It must contain between 3,500 and 4,500 words, excluding footnotes. Papers must be emailed
(no paper copies) to rigogne@fordham.edu
You are responsible for and expected to follow the Fordham College policy on academic integrity. Submit an MS Word file (no
paper copies; no other formats) of your paper via email. Late assignments will be penalized by one-third of a letter grade per day.
No extensions will be given. Papers must include a word count. Papers that exceed the word count will be penalized.

Office hours

ffice hours are for you. Please stop by to discuss your ideas or questions. Do come to see me during office hours
or email to make an appointment if you are encountering difficulties or have questions concerning your
performance in class.

LL 426F
Monday 11am-12pm and Wednesday 5-6 pm, or by appointment (rigogne@fordham.edu)

Schedule
[Bb] indicates texts available on Blackboard. (online) indicates texts available through the Library website (passwords necessary)
Texts must be read and prepared before each session. Please bring books, texts and notes to class.

Introductory Meeting
Tuesday, May 26

Food Writing
W ednesday, May 27
- Mark Kurlansky, Better than Sex, in Mark Kurlansky, Choice Cuts (Penguin, 2002), 1-13
[Bb]
- M. F. K. Fisher, The Pale Yellow Glove, in Carolyn Korsmeyer, ed., The Taste Culture
Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink (Berg, 2005), 293-96 on Blackboard [Bb]
- Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs (Hill & Wang, 1982 [1970]), 11-22 [Bb]
- Dan Jurafsky, Introduction and How to Read a Menu, in The Language of Food:, 1-20
- Sandra M. Gilbert, Add Food and Stir: Life in the Virtual Kitchen, in The Culinary Imagination, 3-23

Food in Literature
Thursday, M ay 28
- Marcel Proust, The Madeleine, in Carolyn Korsmeyer, ed., The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and
Drink (Berg, 2005), 293-96 [Bb]
- Gilbert, Master Belly and Our Daily Bread: A Brief History of the Literary Kitchen and Cooking the
Books: Coziness, Disgust, Desire, Despair, in The Culinary Imagination, 81-110, 231-68

Food on Screens
Monday, June 1
- Anne L. Bower, Watching Food: The Production of Food, Film and Values, in
Anne L. Bower, ed., Reel Food: Essays on Film and Food (Routledge, 2004), 1-16 [Bb]
- Steve Zimmerman, Food for Thought, in Food in the Movies, 2nd ed. (McFarland,
2009), 161-88 [Bb]
- James R. Keller, The Cinematic Hunger Artists, in Food, Film and Culture: A Genre
Study (McFarland, 2006), 1-12 [Bb]
- Gilbert, Hail to the Chef!: The Cook, the Camera, the Critic, and the Connoisseur,
in Culinary Imagination, 199-230

Food in Society: Anthropology and Sociology

Tuesday, June 2
- Marvin Harris, The Abominable Pig [1985], and Roland Barthes, Towards a Sociopsychology of Contemporary Food
[1961], in Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, eds., Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2008), 54-66,
28-35 [Bb]
- Sierra Clark Burnett and Krishnendu Ray, Sociology of Food and R. Kenji Tierney and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney,
Anthropology of Food, in Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Food History (Oxford University Press,
2012), 135-53, 117-34 [Bb]

Food in Society: Histories of Food

W ednesday, June 3
- Enrique C. Ochoa, Political Histories of Food and Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Cultural
Histories of Food, in Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Food
History (Oxford University Press, 2012), 23-60 [Bb]
- Sidney W. Mintz, Food and Its Relationship to Concepts of Power, in Tasting
Food, Tasting Freedom (Beacon Press, 1997), 17-32 [Bb]
- Andrew F. Smith, False Memories: The Invention of Culinary Fakelore and
Food Fallacies, in Harlan Walker, ed., Food and the Memory (Prospect Books, 2001), 254-60 [Bb]

Food, Science, Medicine and Health

Thursday, June 4
- Ken Albala, Diet and Nutrition, in Food in Early Modern Europe (Greenwood Press, 2003), 213-30 [Bb]
- Linda Barthoshuk and Valerie Duffy, Chemical Sense: Taste and Smell and Deborah Lupton, Food
and Emotion, in Carolyn Korsmeyer, ed., The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink (Berg, 2005),
25-33, 317-24 [Bb]
- Gilbert, Food Chained: Food Fights, Fears, Fraudsand Fantasies, in The Culinary Imagination, 307-42

The Art of Food

Monday, June 8
- Carolyn Korsmeyer, The Visual Appetite: Representing Taste and Food, in Making
Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 2002), 146-184 [Bb]
- Jonathan Meades, Meat on Canvas and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The
Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, in Paul Levy, ed., The Penguin Book of Food and
Drink (Penguin, 1996), 346-51, 359-65 [Bb]
- Gilbert, The Poetics of Ice Cream: Eating Art at the Table, in the Gallery, and in a
Grownups Garden of Verses, in The Culinary Imagination, 271-305
*** Library Research session ***

National Cuisines
Tuesday, June 9
- Sidney W. Mintz, Cuisine: High, Low and Not at All and Eating American, in Tasting Food, Tasting
Freedom (Beacon Press, 1997), 92-124 [Bb]
- Alison K. Smith, National Cuisines, in Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Food History
(Oxford University Press, 2012), 444-60 [Bb]
- Arjun Appadurai, How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India, in Carole
Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, eds., Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2008), 289-307 [Bb]

American Food Histories

W ednesday, June 10
- Donna R. Gabaccia, Colonial Creoles: The Formation of Tastes in Early America, in Carolyn
Korsmeyer, ed., The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink (Berg, 2005), 79-85 [Bb]
- Michelle Craig McDonald and Steven Topik, Americanizing Coffee: The Refashioning of a
Consumer Culture, in Alexander Ntzenadel and Frank Trentmann, eds., Food and
Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World (Berg, 2008), 109-28 [Bb]
- Audrey Russek, Appetites without Prejudice : U.S. Foreign Restaurants and the Globalization of
American Food between the Wars, in Benjamin N. Lawrance and Carolyn de la Pea, eds.,
Local Foods Meet Global Foodways: Tasting History (Routledge, 2012), 38-59 [Bb]
4

Food Globalization: The Early Modern Story

Thursday, June 11
- Jurafsky, From Sikbaj to Fish and Chips, Ketchup, Cocktails, and Pirates, Macaroon, Macaron, Macaroni and
Sherbets, Fireworks and Mint Juleps, in The Language of Food, 35-63, 130-58
- Markman Ellis, Preface and ch. 1-2: First Encounters, The Wine of Islam Discovered and The First English
Coffee-House, in The Coffee-House: A Cultural History (Phoenix, 2005), xi-xiii, 1-41 [Bb]
*** Paper proposals due on Friday, June 12 by 6pm ***

Coffee in the Age of Starbucks

M onday, June 15
- Jonathan Morris, Making Italian Espresso, Making Espresso Italian, Food & History 8, no. 2 (2010):
155-183 [Bb]
- Bryant Simon, Introducing the Starbucks Moment, in Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America
from Starbucks (University of California Press, 2009), 1-20 [Bb]
- William Roseberry, The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States,
American Anthropologist 98, No. 4 (1996), 762-75 [Bb] and (online)

Food Globalization: The (Post-)Modern Story

Tuesday, June 16
- Daniel Reichman, Justice at a Price: Regulation and Alienation in the Global Economy
[2008], in Psyche Williams-Forson and Carole Counihan, eds., Taking Food Public:
Redefining Foodways in a Changing World (Routledge, 2012), 343-55 [Bb]
- In-class Movie: Black Gold (2006)

Experiencing Food in the Post-Modern World

W ednesday, June 17
- Gilbert, Bitter Herbs or the Spices of Life: The Ambiguities of the Transnational Foodoir, in The Culinary Imagination,
167-98
- Jurafsky, Sex, Drugs and Sushi Rolls, Potato Chips and the Nature of the Self, Does This Name Make Me Sound
Fat?: Why Ice Cream and Crackers Have Different Names and Why the Chinese Dont Have Dessert, in The
Language of Food, 92-106, 159-85
*** Writing Center session ***

Gendering Food
Thursday, June 18
- Carole Counihan, Gendering Food, in Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Food History (Oxford University
Press, 2012), 99-116 [Bb]
- Susan Bordo, Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization of Culture, in Carole Counihan and Penny
Van Esterik, eds., Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2008), 162-86 [Bb]
- Rebecca Swenson, Domestic Divo? Televised Treatments of Masculinity,
Feminity and Food, in Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, eds., Food
and Culture: A Reader, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2013), 137-153 [Bb]
5

Gendering Drinking and Eating Space

M onday, June 22
- Woodruff Smith, Rational Masculinity and Domestic Feminity, in Consumption and the
Making of Respectability, 1600-1800 (Routledge, 2002), 139-69, 171-87 [Bb]
- Jan Whitaker, Domesticating the Restaurant: Marketing the Anglo-American Home, in Arlene
Voski Avakian and Barbara Haber, eds., From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical
Perspectives on Women and Food (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 89-105 [Bb]

Places of Consumption and Sociability

Tuesday, June 23
- Ray Oldenburg, The Problem of Place in America and The Character of Third Places, in
The Great Good Place: Cafs, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the
Heart of a Community (Marlowe & Company, 1989), 3-42 [Bb]
- Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, Starbucks and Rootless Cosmopolitanism, Gastronomica: The Journal
of Food and Culture 3, no. 4 (2003), 71-75 [Bb] and (online)

Wrap Up
W ednesday, June 24

Final Paper
Thursday, June 25
*** Final paper due at 4 pm ***