Readings

Jan. 9 – Introduction

Jan 16. – The Meaning and Significance of Food

Jones, M.O. (2007) Food Choice, Symbolism and Identity. Journal of American Folklore 120(476), 129-77.

Mintz , S.1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press (selections).

Jan 23 – Food Has Always Moved

A historical look at the movement of plants and cuisines.

Nunn, N. & N. Qian (2010) The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food and Ideas. Journal of Economic Perspectives 24(2) 163-188.

Gupta, A. (2012) A Different History of the Present: The Movement of Crops, Cuisines and Globalization. In K Ray and T. Srinivas (eds) Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia. Berekely: University of California Press, 29-45.

Mintz, S. (2008) Food and Diaspora. Food, Culture and Society, 11(4), 510-523.

*read the short piece on the blog under links and resources – “How the Potato Changed the World.
Jan 30 – Fixing Food – How do we come to think of foods as attached to particular ideological formations (e.g., nations, ethnicities, places) and how are those ties exposed through a focus on transnationalism?

Appadurai, A. (1988) How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 30(1), 3-24.

MacDonald, K. (in press) The Transnational Life of Cheese. In A. Quayson & G. Daswani (eds) Blackwell Companion to Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Guy, K.M. (2007) When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (selections).

Heldke, L (2005) But is it Authentic? Culinary Travel and the Search for the “Genuine Article”. In. C. Korsmeyer (ed) The Taste Culture Reader. New York: Berg, 385-394.

Pilcher, J.M. (1998) Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. Alberquerque: University of new Mexico Press. (Chapt. 6)

Feb. 6 The Empire of Rotis: Transnationalism, Sites of Identity & Syncretism

Screening of Richard Fung’s film Dal Puri Diaspora

Kitchens of all kinds are key sites in the reciprocal production of food and identity.  In this seminar, we chart the adaptation, substitution, and indigenization of ingredients, foodstuffs, and methods of preparation across time and space. We consider the dynamics of food preparation in transnational spaces and the place of cooking in negotiating shared senses of diasporic identity.  Equally, we examine the particular pressures on women, as professional and home cooks to provide a sense of ‘home’ and stability through food.

Cook, Ian & M. Harrison (2007) Follow the Thing: West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce. Space and Culture. 10(1), 40-63.

Grieshop, J. I (2006) The Envios of San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca: Food, Home and Transnationalism. Human Orgnaization 65(4) 400-406.

Padoongpatt, T. M. (2011) Too Hot to Handle: Food, Empire and Race in Thai Los Angeles. Radical History Review. 110, 83-108.

Feb 13 – The Syncretic Pot: Cooking in Transnational Spaces. The dynamics of preparation in transnational spaces and the place of cooking in negotiating shared senses of diasporic identity. this reshaping of ingredients and cooking methods often leads to a reshaping of diasporic culinary cultures, such that the dishes sometimes bear little resemblance to the original version

Ferris, Marcie Cohen (2004) Feeding the Jewish Soul in the Delta Diaspora. Southern Cultures, 10(3), 52-85.

Abarca, M.E. (2004) Authentic or Not, It’s Original. Food and Foodways. 12(1), 1-25.

Lu, Shun and Gary Alan Fine. 1995. “The Presentation of Ethnic Authenticity: Chinese Food as a Social Accomplishment.” The Sociological Quarterly 36(3): 535-553.

Feb 20 – Reading Week

Feb. 27 – Transnational Food Spaces:  A consideration of the kitchen, the dining room, the grocery store, the garden, the café, the restaurant, the school and the workplace as sites of transculturation, spaces in which disparate representations of ‘the other’ (and ‘other foods’) are encountered, and the reconfigurations of food, eating and identity that result form these encounters.

Sangmee, B (2005) From Strange Bitter Concoction to Romantic Necessity: The Social History of Coffee Drinking in South Korea. Korea Journal. 45(2) 37-59.

Gabaccia, D.R. & J.M. Pilcher (2011) “Chili Queens” and Checkered Tablecloths: Public Dining Culture of Italian in New York City and Mexicans in San Antonio, Texas, 1870s- 1940s. Radical History Review. 110, 109-125.

Ray, K. (2012) Ethnic Succession and the New America Restaurant Cuisine. In K. Ray (ed) In K. Ray and T. Srinivas (eds) Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press

Yan, Y. (2008) 2008 Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald’s in Beijing. In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, pp. 500-522. Routledge, New York.

Mar. 6 – The Diasporic Garden: explorations of the various modes and mechanisms of production and distribution required to supply the products integral to the social and commercial production of foodstuffs for diasporic communities; including the often-invisible spaces of backyard gardens, community farms, ethnic markets, etc.

Baker, L. (2004) Tending Cultural Landscapes and Food Citizenship in Toronto’s Community Gardens. The Geographical Review 94(3) 305-325.

Srinivas, T. 2012 Masala Matters: Globalization, female food entrepreneurs, and the changing politics of provisioning. In K. Ray and T. Srinivas (eds) Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press

Renne, E. P (2007) Mass Producing Food Traditions for West Africans Abroad. American Anthropologist. 109(4) 616-625.

Imbruce, V. (2006) From the Bottom Up:The Global Expansion of Chinese Vegetable Trade for New York City Markets, In R. Wilk (ed) Fast Food/Slow Food: The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 163-180.

* also read “The Immigrant Thali” under “Links and Resources”.

Mar. 13 – Affective Bodies at the Transnational Table:  Considerations of the relations between affect, food, manners and etiquette and the disciplining effect of eating in embodying and performing the qualities integral to diasporic identifications.

Adapon, J. (2008) Culinary Art and Anthropology. London: Berg. (Chapt 6 – The Centrality of Gastronomy in Social Life).

Duruz, J. (2009) Living in Singapore, Traveling to Hong Kong, Remembering Australia: Intersections of Food and Place, Journal of Australian Studies. 30(87), 101-115.

Beoku-Betts, J.A. (1995) We Got Our Own Way Of Cooking Things: Women, Food, and Preservation of Cultural Identity among the Gullah. Gender and Society 9(5), 535-555.

Longhurst, R. et al. (2009) A Visceral Approach: Cooking ‘at Home’ with Migrant Women in Hamilton, New Zealand. Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers 34, 333-345.

 

Mar 20  – Food Memories: Considering the work performed by food in the reproduction of sociality, myth and ritual and practice that are core to maintaining the boundaries of diasporic communities and constructs of ‘home’, ‘away’, and ‘return’.

Rowe A.E. (2012) Mint Grows Through the Cracks in the Foundation: Food Practices of the Assimilated Lebanese Diaspora in New England (USA), Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment, 20:3-4, 211-232.

David Sutton. 2005. “Synesthesia , Memory and the Taste of Home” in C. Korsmeyer (ed.), The Taste Reader. Berg. 304-316.

Yano, C.R. (2009) Side-Dish Kitchen: Japanese American Delicatessens and the Culture of Nostalgia. in D. Beriss, and David Sutton (eds.) Restaurants: the Anthropology of Where We Eat. London: Berg

* Also read the piece “Culinary Nostalgia” under “links and Resources”

 

Mar. 27 Am I What I Eat?: Transnational Flows, Food and Constructs of Authenticity: Questioning the role of authenticity in sanctioning foodstuffs and how constructs and conceptions of ‘the authentic self’ change as people strive (and often fail) to reproduce ‘authentic’ cuisines.

Lee, S.S. (2000) Dys-Appearing Tongues and Bodily Memories: The Aging of First-Generation Resident Koreans in Japan. Ethos 28(2), 198-222.

Hirsch, D. (2011) “Hummus is best when it is fresh and made by Arabs”: The Gourmetization of hummus in Israel and the return of the repressed Arab. American Ethnologist. 38(4) 617-630.

Forero, O and G. Smith (2011) The Reproduction of ‘Cultural Taste’ among the Ukrainian Diaspora in Bradford, England. The Sociological Review, 58, 78-96.

Oum, Y.R. (2005) Authenticity and representation: cuisines and identities in Korean-American diaspora. Postcolonial Studies 8(1) 109-125.

 

Apr. 3 – Where’s Little India? Enclave Eating and Cosmo-Multiculturalism:  questions of the degree to which the ready availability of diasporic foodstuffs encourages or permits a ‘lazy’ engagement in which eating ‘the foreign’ or ‘the exotic’ is focused on the production of a distinctive self and displaces other more substantive or productive forms of engagement with difference. A consideration of the role of food in the development of distinct “ethnic quarters”, the historical conditions in which such enclaves are produced and whether such “ethnic quarters” further the economic exploitation and alienation of diaspora, or point to the ‘success’ of multiculturalism.

Buettner, E. (2012) “Going for an Indian”: South Asian restaurants and the limits of multiculturalism in Britain. In K. Ray and T. Srinivas (eds) Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press; 143-174.

Ram, M. et al. (2000) “Currying Favor with the locals”: Balti Owners and Business Enclaves. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research 6(1).

Lem, W. (2009) Daughters, Duty and Deference in the Franco-Chinese Restaurant in D. Beriss, and David Sutton (eds.) Restaurants: the Anthropology of Where We Eat. London: Berg

Kim, D.Y. (1999) Beyond Co-Ethnic Solidarity: Mexican and Ecuadorian Employment in Korea-Owned Businesses in New York City. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(3), 581-605.