Religion, Food and the Environment

Catalog description

Humans eat food. Human cultural and religious phenomena relate intimately to patterns of eating-which is why anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and scholars of religions have long been fascinated with the relationships between sacred stores and ritual practices involving food. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying the intersections between religion, food, and environments. Students will address questions about religious law, mythic narratives, ritual practice, symbolic meaning, identity formation, and animal and ecological ethics, as we explore Jewish kosher observance, Christian Eucharistic practice, Islamic halal, and other kinds of religious eating. Special attention will be given throughout the course to issues of race, ethnicity, and gender across multiple social identities.