Readings on Food and Eating
NOTE TO STUDENTS: In order to access these readings, you will need an LCCC email address and password. When you click on the links below, you will be prompted to log in to the Bass Library system in the same way you log in to MyCampus and Canvas. Some of these links will take you directly to a PDF or HTML version of the reading selection. Other links will take you to the library’s catalogue page for the selection where you will have to use the “Full Text Finder” link to access the reading in a different database. You can read the selections online or print them, and many are available to download.
Carole M. Counihan, “Food Rules in the United States: Individualism, Control, and Hierarchy”
Writing Questions:
- Carole M. Counihan’s essay begins by referencing a long history of studies showing how “[r]ules about food consumption are an important means through which human beings construct reality,” and proceeds to apply this concept to food consumption habits in college settings, exploring how college students in the United States appear to adhere to traditional cultural values through food habits, which uphold traditional systems of power and stratification (55). After reading Counihan’s essay, write an Analysis Essay that critically analyses your own food habits, as well as the expectations–and potentially biases–you hold about the eating habits of your peers. What do these habits and beliefs mean? Do they connect with, encode, or participate in any stereotypes or traditions?
Jane Dusselier, “Understandings of Food as Culture”
Writing Questions:
- Food studies is a broad interdisciplinary field, and Jane Dusselier’s “Understandings of Food as Culture” provides a brief overview of its anthropological side. Following a varied scholarly lineage, Dusselier explores how food and food habits serve as cultural artefacts which, when analyzed, can reveal cultural meanings and information. Write an Analysis Essay in which you identify a food or food habit that is important to your culture. What does this food or food habit mean, and what does it reveal about your culture? Alternatively, analyze the food or food habit for what it could reveal about your own personal identity.
Angela Meah, “Materializing Memory, Mood, and Agency: The Emotional Geographies of the Modern Kitchen”
Writing Questions:
- Angela Meah’s research explores what spaces–particularly kitchen spaces–can mean. Following Meah’s lead, write an Analysis Essay that analyzes the construction and design of your own kitchen or an important kitchen in your memory for meaning. Explore how these spaces impact your identity and understanding of labor relationships in domestic life.
Additional Readings on Food and Eating
- Donald L Barlett and James B. Steele, “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear”
- Jonathan Safran Foer, “The End of Meat is Here”
- Blake Hurst, “The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals”
- Margaret Mead, “The Changing Significance of Food”
- Marion Nestle, “Eating Made Simple”
- Robert Paarlberg, “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers”
- Michael Pollan, “Why Bother?”
- Eric Schlosser, “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good”
- Thomas Sumner, “Quenching Society’s Thirst”
- Selina Wang, “The Future of Farming Is Looking Up”
- Lily Wong, “Eating the Hyphen”
