Cornell
University Dept
of History
Fall 2010 S.
L. Kaplan
SYLLABUS HISTORY 274 : A SOCIAL
HISTORY OF FOOD AND EATING
Instructions :
The books assigned
are to be read in their entirety unless otherwise indicated. They can be purchased
in paperback or used in the
library. The readings marked with an asterisk are articles or monographs
available in the course packet.
Week
One : In The Beginning
Richard
Wrangham, Catching Fire :
How Cooking Made us Human.
Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01362-3
Week
Two : Eating the
Inedible: Abjection and/or Ecstasy
Piers Read, Alive. Avon. ISBN 978-0-80003211
Week
Three : Accounting for Food Habits: Affection, Aversion,
Comportment
***Mary Douglas, "Deciphering a
Meal"
***Marvin Harris, "Mother Cow"
***Jean Soler,
"The Semiotics of Food in the Bible"
***Claire Palmerino,
"Pleasing the Palate"
Week
Four : Signs, Symbols, Codes
***M. Sahlins,
"The Original Affluent Society"
***R. Barthes, "Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food
Consumption"
***R. Firth, "Food Symbolism in Pre-lndustrial Society"
***S. Regelson,
"The Bagel"
***L. Taylor, "Coffee: the Bottomless
Cup
Week
Five : Women, Food and Power
Caroline Bynum , Holy Feast and Holy Fast . University of
California. ISBN: 978-0-520063297. Required: pages to be announced;
recommended: the entire Eucharist.
Week
Six : Race, Class, Identity, Gender and Food
Frederick
Douglass Opie, Hogs and
Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America. Columbia UP. ISBN 978-0-231-14638-8
Week
Seven : Food, Memory, Self, and Writing about Them
Ruth Reichl ,Tender at the
Bone: Growing up at the Table. Random House. ISBN: 988-0-767903387
Week Eight : Food and National Sense of Self
Jeffrey M. Pilcher , ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN: 9780826318732
Week
Nine : Foodways and
Acculturation : Assimilation and Identity
Hsia R. Diner,
Hungering for America :
Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration. Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN : 0-674-01111-2
Week
Ten : : The Staff of Life and the Social Contract:
Subsistence, the State and the Consumer in Old Regime France
***S. L.
Kaplan, "Breadways"
***S. L.
Kaplan, The Famine Plot Persuasion
***E. P.
Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the
Week
Eleven : The
Anxiety of the Omnivore : Food Phobias, Food Traumas in the European
Experience
Madeleine
Ferrières, Sacred Cow, Mad Cow : A History of Food Fears.
Colimbia UP. ISDDBN 0-231-13102-5
Week
Twelve : The American Way of Eating: the Darkside
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s
Dilemma: A natural History of Four Meals,
pp. 1-273 (the curious are
invited to continue by wandering in the forest….). Penguin. ISBN:
978-0-14-303858-0
Week
Thirteen :
A Utopian Model
or Common-sense Eating :
Food as Culture
Carlo Petrini, Slow Food : the Case for Taste.
Columbia UP. ISBN : 978-0-231-12845-2