History of American Food

Logistics

Course Description

When you think of Mexican food, or Italian, or Chinese, a range of dishes and ingredients immediately spring to mind. But what about American food? Is there such a thing? Does this concept even make sense? In many ways, no, but why do we still use it so much? How can food help us understand the nature of stereotypes?

This course explores both historical and contemporary ways of thinking about ‘American’ food and the relationship between food and identity. We look at the changing meanings of food and foodways throughout US history, particularly how people have attached cultural values to certain foods yet rejected others, and how foodways are so frequently an expression of personal, community, and national values.

While the history of food in the U.S. runs throughout the course, the main goal is to see how much fun we can have exploring different perspectives on how we use food as means of self-expression. The history is really a means to an end: to think more critically about meanings of food in the present.

Learning Objectives

Color Guide

Required Texts and Readings

There are NO REQUIRED BOOKS OR READERS for the course; everything is accessible online. LITERALLY EVERYTHING you need for the course is either already available online (and linked to on the syllabus), or is a PDF in our Zotero library as described below. You never need to find anything on your own!

We use one free, online textbook that we use to provide useful overview:

We use a tool called Zotero to organize and provide access to all readings for the course. To get connected, carefully follow the getting started guide. If it doesn’t work for you, please follow the directions more carefully. They’ve worked for hundreds of students!

Course work

This lists the kinds of assignments you’ll be doing, with an approximate percent of your final grade (exact points are computed in Canvas)

Grading Scale

Whatever the exact number of points we end up with, your grade is determined by percent, as indicated below. You can always see at any point exactly what your grade is in Canvas.

Percent Grade
98+ A+
92-97 A
90-91 A-
87-89 B+
82-86 B
80-81 B-
77-79 C+
73-76 C
70-72 C-
66-69 D+
60-65 D
59- F

Submitting Work

AI Policy & Academic Integrity

Bottom line: let AI help polish your writing, don’t use it to think for you.

Get your grade

Some of you just want a C to fulfill a UNM requirement. Some of you want a B to maintain a solid GPA. Some of you want an A because top grades are really important to you. Put in the work that justifies the grade you want for each assignment, and if you’re not getting the scores you want, LET ME KNOW. Usually a few minor tweaks go a long way towards improving your scores. Please know I want to do everything I can to ensure that the work you’re putting in matches the grade you want.

Extra Credit

On all the assignments, the goal is to show how much you learned from the reading(s). Writing more than the quiz question or assignment requires, if clearly informed by the readings, will usually get you extra credit points for that question. If you’re really into a topic and have a little extra time for an assignment, it’s an easy way to make sure you’re on track for the grade you want. These add up and make a difference!

If you are worried you are falling just short of a grade you’re aiming for, there is an easy way to ensure you get it! Do a Food Documentary Critique (worth up to 15 points). WARNING: This critique assignment is EXTRA. You can do this ONLY if all other work is turned in on time. This should be emailed to me directly.

Familiarity over mastery

If you peek at the schedule page, you might think there is a lot of reading, comapred to non-humanities courses. You’re right! There’s usually at least one article or book chapter for each class meeting.

One of the main skills we develop in this course is sorting through a long reading to extract the main point and evaluate argument and evidence. For almost everything we read, we’re reading to ENGAGE with it, NOT because it’s right. There is a LOT to disagree with across the readings, and we don’t all have to agree on everything.

You cannot possibly read every word, or every page, or master all the ideas, and that’s just fine. I expect you to gain a familiarity across all the readings so that you can write a thoughtful response about them. Because we cover a lot of ground over the whole semester, broad familiarity is far more important than specific details.