HH2008 Feasting and Fasting: Food & Drink in History

This course is intended to whet students` appetites for a new interdisciplinary field,

which focuses on the histories of everyone`s favorite past-time: eating! The course will

be structured thematically rather than chronologically, commencing with a focus on the

economics of food purchasing, its preparation, the rituals and practices associated with

its consumption, including the development of table manners and the use of various

implements as well as the acts of eating or abstaining. Various religious and cultural

dietary regulations and taboos will be examined next, before a series of case studies

looking at the connections between food and world politics: such as colonialism and

nationalism. The development of food consumption as a leisure and social activity will

also be analysed, before the course concludes with a study of the gendered aspects of

food history in an interdisciplinary perspective.