Feasting And Fasting Food And Drink In History

AY2016/2017 Semester 1

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.