First-Year Research Seminar: Women's Work and Identity Politics in Latin American Food and…

Catalog description

This course hinges on harnessing food and foodways to research and explore issues and questions of cultural behaviors and traditions, gender politics, social hierarchies and perceptions or realities of agency in Spanish and Portuguese speaking Latin America. We examine the history and current lived experience in various nations in Latin America by considering how eating and cooking practices changed over time to become a symbol of civilization, whether biased towards European standards or culturally relative to local, indigenous or multiracial realities on the ground. Attention will be paid to the Columbian Exchange, the role of food in various nation-states, and the effects of globalization on the eating habits of Latin Americans. Finally, we consider the connections between food and identity among Latino/as in the United States. Throughout the semester, we reflect predominantly on the role of women in transforming and preserving food cultures, and how women’s choices in the kitchen influenced the history of Latin American countries. In this course we will research and question the association of cooking with drudgery, a task from which women should liberate themselves. Concurrently we will look at cooking as a creative and empowering activity, as a source of identity and a manifestation of culture. The course is based on analysis of primary sources such as cookbooks, historical documents, chefs, cinema, and art along with various secondary sources.