Food links people across space and time. As it spirals outward from parochial sites of origin to articulate with new sites, actors and scales, it assumes new substance and meaning in new locales. This movement of food gives rise to new ‘foodways’ to help us to understand the past in terms of temporally connected sites of intense interaction. Food also plays a strong role in shaping translocal identities. As peoples have moved in the world, food has played a central role in (re)defining who they are, reproducing myth and ritual, and bounding diasporic communities. This course seeks to address questions surrounding the dynamics of the food ‘we’ eat, the ways in which ‘we’ eat, the meaning ‘we’ give to eating, and the effect of eating in a transnational world. Recognizing that culinary culture is central to diasporic identifications, the focus is on the place of food in the enduring habits, rituals, and everyday practices that are collectively used to produce and sustain a shared sense of diasporic cultural identity.
Food links people across space and time. As it spirals outward from parochial sites of origin to articulate with new sites, actors and scales, it assumes new substance and meaning in new locales. This movement of food gives rise to new ‘foodways’ to help us to understand the past in terms of temporally connected sites of intense interaction. Food also plays a strong role in shaping translocal identities. As peoples have moved in the world, food has played a central role in (re)defining who they are, reproducing myth and ritual, and bounding diasporic communities. This course seeks to address questions surrounding the dynamics of the food ‘we’ eat, the ways in which ‘we’ eat, the meaning ‘we’ give to eating, and the effect of eating in a transnational world. Recognizing that culinary culture is central to diasporic identifications, the focus is on the place of food in the enduring habits, rituals, and everyday practices that are collectively used to produce and sustain a shared sense of diasporic cultural identity.
