Food and Aesthetics

Semester and Year	SP 2010
Course Number	IDSEM-UG1579
Section	001
Instructor	Rahul Hamid
Days	Fri
Time	12:30 PM - 3:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Description

Food can be both physical sustenance and a form of cultural expression. As with comedy and pornography, this too direct tie to the body problematizes the appreciation of food as a purely aesthetic pleasure. This interdisciplinary seminar will examine food and foodways as they appear in literature, film and painting. These cultural artifacts will be contextualized through readings in the social sciences and the new politics of food. We will try to discover how attitudes about the enjoyment and preparation of food change and reflect different historic eras and cultural milieus. Why are gluttony and abstention tied to morality? Where do our ideas about taste and aesthetics come from? Can we separate an aesthetic appreciation of food from current concerns about sustainability, food safety, and human and environmental health? Texts will include Epicurus's writings, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste, E.A. Burtt's Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast, Juzo Itami's Tampopo, Francis Bacon's meat paintings, and Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Course Type

Interdisciplinary Seminars (IDSEM-UG)