Anthropology of Food

Catalog description

The way humans make and consume food shapes our lives and transforms our world. From our hunter-gatherer past to your family's most recent holiday dinner, in this course we explore the relationship between food, society, and our environment. Through cross-cultural, historical, and ecological studies, the anthropology of food reveals fascinating patterns of cooperation, inequality, and human diversity. The class is divided into three parts: making food (food production), eating food (food consumption), and being food (relationship between food and identity). Our semester includes three feast days and an off-campus field trip.