CAST 416OC - Taste the Nation: Culture, Consumption, and American Identities

FC ARHU CD WADV

4 credits
Do your tastes in food, art, and popular culture say something about who you are? In this class, we will draw on philosophy and critical theory in order to discuss the politics of consumption in several different contexts. Along the way, we will analyze works of art, literature, and pop culture that make connections between taste and particular constructions of nationality, sexuality, gender, race, class, and ethnicity. Figures we will encounter in this class include Padma Lakshmi, Pierre Bourdieu, Laura Esquivel, Susan Sontag, and Kerry James Marshall. Students who take this course as part of the StudiOC learning community Eating in Public: Taste, Place, and Identity must also enroll in SOCI 387OC. Recommended Preparation: previous coursework in comparative American studies.