Schedule of Readings & Assignments

1: Aug 19 + 21

Our task for this week is to make sure we’re all on the same page about how the course is structured and general expectations.

Aug 19: Course introductions

• Syllabus + course overview

Aug 21: Challenges and Rewards of Food + History

• Warren Belasco, “Why study food?”, from Food: The Key Concepts, 1–13.
• Andrew P. Haley, “The Nation before Taste: The Challenges of American Culinary History”, The Public Historian 34.2 (2012): 53–78.

2: Aug 26 + 28

Aug 26: American Food

The goal for today is to complicate the idea of “American” food. There are an unusually high number of readings for today, but they are all quite short and offer unique perspectives that are worth thinking about together.

• HAE, xi–xv. (Remember that HAE refers to How America Eats as described with a link at the top of the page.)
• Mind of Chef: Ed Lee on American Food
• Ruth Tobias, Is There Such a Thing as ‘American’ Food?. This article touches on culinary/cultural appropriation, which is a topic we cover in some depth in a few weeks, so focus for no
• Sidney Mintz, “Eating American”. (Remember, if there’s no link, it’s in the Zotero library). This is easily the most controversial piece this week, suggesting there is no such thing as American Cuisine. We’ll discuss in class how much you agree or disagree with his argument.

Aug 28: National Cuisines

Today we’ll broaden out our discussion of American food to discuss national cuisine generally.

• Alison K. Smith, National Cuisines, from The Oxford Handbook of Food History, part 5, chapter 25 (2012).
  • Skim/skip over the long Russia example at the end, but do read the last paragraph! This is definitely the driest of the readings for this week, but it clearly articulates several useful concepts that help us get a bigger perspective on the topic. Usually each paragraph introduces a new idea to how we can analyze ‘national’ food/cuisine, so it’s very organized that way, but there isn’t a particular ‘flow’ to it, which makes it easy to feel lost. Just look for the next point!

3: Sep 2 + 4

Almost everyone thinks about whether some kind of food or dish is “authentic” from time to time. But what does that really mean? The few readings for today should help us think more carefully notions of authenticity—particularly how it’s paradoxically an entirely superficial way of describing food, but still a very powerful one.

Sep 2: Authenticity I

• Rachel Laudan, Desperately Seeking Authenticity
• Dwight Furrow, American Foodie (7: Habits and Heresies: Authenticity, Food Rules, and Traditions), 133–48.

Sep 4: Authenticity II

• Sara Kay, Yelp Reviewers’ Authenticity Fetish Is White Supremacy in Action. I don’t agree with the conclusions of this article, but I want you to understand the argument. What else can an “authenticity fetish” represent?
• Clarissa Wei, What does authentic Chinese food even mean?
• CHALLENGE: Matthew Strohl, ‘On Culinary Authenticity’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 77.2 (2019), 157–67.
• CHALLENGE: Jeffrey Pratt, “Food Values: The Local and the Authentic,” 285–300.

4: Sep 9 + 11

Sep 9: Cuisines of Contact

• HAE, 1–31 (from Ch. 1: Cuisine of Contact).
  • This chapter gives us a lot of basic background information, but also very useful analysis of the meanings of food. For example, we learn how uses of food were essential to Puritan identity, especially the concern for feasting or fasting too much or too little. Puritans were afraid of both abundance and scarcity, as they saw food as means to survive, not a source of enjoyment.
• Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, America’s Founding Food (1: This Beautifull Noble Eare), read 4–15 and 45–48 more carefully; skim (but don’t skip) 15–45 on the various dishes.
  • In the early pages, look for how corn figured into different cultural value systems
  • In the section you’re skimming: What do the recipes do? What’s the point? They illustrate through specific examples (maybe too many) how many Native American culinary traditions were incorporated into English traditions, how English traditions adapted to new geographic circumstances, and how many Native American traditions were gradually were assimilated into what would be considered quintessentially American dishes (Riinjun bread into Boston Brown Bread).

Sep 11: More Corn

• Michael Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, (Chap. 2: The Farm), 32–56. The point of this reading (it’s the fastest read for today) is to get a sense of the commoditization of corn and why it’s so cheap now. And to compare the meaning of corn as discussed in the other readings with how it’s portrayed in this chapter.
• Erick Castellanos and Sarah Bergstresser, “The Mexican and Transnational Lives of Corn: Technological, Political, Edible Object”, in Edible Identities (ed. Broulotte and Di Giovine), Taylor & Francis (2016), 201–216.

5: Sep 16 + 18

Sep 16: Early America, Food, and Households

• HAE, 33–55 (2: Food and the Founding). Continuing our thinking about food and identity, this chapter covers how capitalism and food were central to shaping early American identity. Both this chapter and the other reading emphasize the importance of capitalist markets, food production, and the development of cookbooks as a way of cultivating an American cuisine (and identity).
• Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, America’s Founding Food (4: Cookbooks and Commerce), 120–147. Even though not clearly marked, there are two distinct parts to this reading.
  • SKIM BUT DON’T SKIP the first part (to 129), which explains the capitalist logic of food production in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and how central food was to economic growth. This is important background knowledge to have, but don’t sweat the details.
  • The second part (129+) shows how early cookbooks start reflect the cultural changes underway during that time, and to some extent become drivers of those changes as well.
  • This reading complements the HAE reading with considerable more detail about the role of women in managing food, the household, and shaping American foodways.

Sep 18: NO CLASS

6: Sept 23 + 25

Sep 23: History from Cookbooks

• Review the Cookbook Comparison Guide to get a sense of what we’re working toward.
• Ken Albala, Cookbooks as Historical Documents. This highly skimmable chapter nicely lays out a process for interrogating cookbooks and reading in between the lines with many excellent examples.
• Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, “Cookbook as Resources for Social History”. This chapter very nicely sketches out, with many diverse examples, how cookbooks function as windows onto history, including how and why they were used in the world. It has a much broader scope than Early U.S. History.

Sept 25: Early American Cookbook Contexts

• Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook (2: Culinary Tradition), 29–51. This provides a fascinating cultural background of cookbooks and their evolution. Honestly the first few sentences of each paragraph will give you enough background.
• Rachel A. Snell, As North American as Pumpkin Pie: Cookbooks and the Development of National Cuisine in North America, 1796-1854. This title is misleading, as the article is more about how cookbooks can be used to create a national identity more than a cuisine. And that’s precisely why it’s interesting and useful to us in thinking about how to read old cookbooks. The analysis here is a great example of what I hope you’ll do (on a much smaller scale) with your own cookbooks.

Some cookbooks mentioned in the readings

• Amelia Simmons, American Cookery. For more, see Harry Haff, The Founders of American Cuisine: Seven Cookbook Authors, with Historical Recipes (2: Amelia Simmons), 21–33. This is a great example of how the author analyzes Simmons’s cookbook, particularly the way the author comments on how explanation or ambiguities in the recipes reflect what readers would know or not know.
• Lydia Child, American Frugal Housewife
• Mary Randolph The Virginia Housewife
• Eliza Leslie, Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery

7: Sep 30 + Oct 2

Sep 30: Expansion and Immigration

• HAE, 57–87 (3: Expansion and Immigration).

Oct 2: Restaurants as Agents of Change

• Samantha Barbas, “‘I’ll Take Chop Suey’: Restaurants as Agents of Culinary and Cultural Change”, The Journal of Popular Culture, 36.4 (2003): 669–86. As a complement to the HAE chapter, this article vividly illustrates how a certain kind of cuisine is adopted, adapted, and transformed into the melting pot of American food. There is way more detail than we need here, but Barbas paints an intriguing portrait of the creation of Chinese American food, which I would say has been one of the most vibrant genres of cookbooks in the last few years.

8: Fall Break

Oct 7 AND Oct 9: FALL BREAK

NO CLASS! Make some good food. Argue about its authenticity.

9: Oct 14 + 16

Welcome back! I hope you all had a nice break.

We left off thinking about the diffusion of Chinese food via American dishes like chop suey in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We learned Chinese people were not as popular as their food (which can be said for most immigrant groups, I’d say), and we learned something about the process of culinary adaptation, diffusion, and the socialization of new cuisines. We continue that thread by looking at the diffusion of “southwestern cuisine”.

Oct 14: Southwest Diffusion

• Amy Bentley, “From Culinary Other to Mainstream America: Meanings and Uses of Southwestern Cuisine”, in Culinary Tourism (ed. Lucy M. Long), University Press of Kentucky (2013), 209–223. Aspects of this article will remind you of the chop suey article from last class before break—namely the transformation of foods once considered “foreign” or “inedible” into mainstream staples and how food can simultaneously express admiration for and dominance over another culture. I want to focus on the key factors that helped southwestern food become so culturally ubiquitous (and whether you agree with Bentley or not).
• Anastacia Uriegas, Fajitas, Queso & Enchiladas: A Look at the Origins of Tex-Mex Favorites. This is a fun set of histories, but what kinds of key issues are left OUT in these tales?

Oct 16: Nature + Technology

• HAE, 89–110 (Ch. 4: Technology and Taste).

Fun cereal history

Is anything more American than cereal for breakfast? Today There are fun, easy readings that provide additional histortical anecdotes and tidbits about cereal history.

Skim through these for some extra background for our discussion. Honestly, nothing essential but great stories for cocktail parties!

• Sarah Pruitt, “How an Accidental Invention Changed What Americans Eat for Breakfast”
• Blake Hatton, The Early Years of American Ready to Eat Breakfast Cereal: The Breakfast Cereal Revolution Until 1930.
• Jaya Saxena, How Cereal Became the Quintessential American Breakfast. Not much new historical information in this one, but it’s really fun for for its focus on advertising and great images?.

10: Oct 21 + 23

Oct 21: Nutrition, Economy, and Citizenship

• Katherine Turner, How the Other Half Ate (Ch. 1: The Problem of Food), ebook pp. 14–39. [online through UNM]. Not you can read the chapter online or download a PDF of the chapter (which I often find easier to display how I want).

This book gives us excellent background on working-class life in the U.S. around 1900. There is way more detail than we need (but helps ground the analysis in specific examples as I’m always asking you to do), so be sure you’re reading to grasp the big picture of who the working class are, how they eat, and what they value (and don’t) in food.

Oct 23: Scientific Moralization

• Charlotte Biltekoff, Eating Right in America (Ch. 2: Scientific Moralization), 13–44. This reading illustrates how early nutritional scientists and social reformers tried to contain and order the chaos of diverse tastes, preferences, and eating habits of all the different people immigrating to the U.S. from the 1880s to the 1920s. The emphasis on dietary habits was a way of creating/maintaining a more consistent societal fabric. In the minds of social reformers, there was too much cultural and culinary diversity; the country needed a standard way of eating to make a stronger and more unified, more civilized bodies of citizens. Note how this is somewhat contrary to the blending/adaptation narrative we’ve read about at times with respect to various food traditions.

11: Oct 28 + 30

Oct 28: Americanizing Diets

Today we’re continuing into the 20th century and looking at (as the title chapter suggests) Americanizing the many “foreign” (and increasingly industrial) foods that are spreading around the country. Many themes will seem similar to the last few readings (yay continuity!) but we also see how “American” food is being re-created / reconceptualized after 30 million immigrants bring their amazing cultures and food to the U.S.

• Helen Zoe Veit, Modern Food, Moral Food (6: Americanizing the American Diet), 123–56.

Oct 30: Food festivals, archives, and stories 🎃

• David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster” (BIAS ALERT: This is one of my favorite short essays ever, for reasons why we shall discuss. READ FOOTNOTE #6, possibly the GOAT.)
• A few short readings / resources on food archive projects:
  • Explore What America Ate. Find a couple stories, recipes, ads, or whatever and come prepared to describe what you found interesting.
  • On that same site, there is a short essay that’s perfect for us (and that you should read) on community cookbooks.
  • With the article in mind, browse through a few Community and Charity Cookbooks, and again come prepared to discuss 1 or 2.
  • Beyond the Cookbook: A Call to Bring Community into Food Studies Archives
  • Oral History Project Preserves Black and Indigenous Food Traditions. Although we have a slightly different focus, this is similar to what our food stories project will do (minus collecting seeds, which is super important!).
• IN CLASS: We’ll discuss what you discovered in the above links, and the Food Stories assignment overview.

12: Nov 4 + 6

Nov 4: Beef 🥩

• Joshua Specht, The price of plenty: how beef changed America

Nov 6: Chicken 🍗

• Emeyln Rude, Tastes like Chicken, 6–11; 27–39; 130–134; 141–160; 181–192.
  • Sorry for all the partial sections here, but the PDF is just the pages you need to read (the book goes off on many cool tangents, which obscures the big picture).
  • This looks like a crazy amount of reading, but there are not many words per page; many pages are recipes that you can skip over. It goes by fast, and it’s a fun non-academic read.

13: Nov 11 + 13

Nov 11: Food Stories technical review

• Nothing to read for today, but we’ll go through the entire process for your food stories assignment, so you know exactly what you need to do and how long it will take.

Nov 13: NO CLASS

• Work on your story pages!

14: Nov 18 + 20

Nov 18: Fast food frameworks 🍔

• Steven Penfold “Fast food”, from The Oxford Handbook of Food History, 279–302.

Nov 20: Countercuisine 🥗

• Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change, 29–42 (2: Radical Consumerism) and 43–67 (3: Oppositional Identities).

15: Thanksgiving week

Just one meeting this week, and we’re going back in time a little to examine the historical construction of Thanksgiving. Lots of ideas for the dinner table!

Nov 25: T-day mythology

• Philip Deloria, “The Invention of Thanksgiving”, New Yorker, 95.37 (November 25, 2019): 70–74. [Also in Zotero if the link doesn’t work.]
• Janet Siskind, “The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality”, 167–91.
• First Thanksgiving Menu. This quick read serves two purposes: it’s a nice overview of what food were likely available at the harvest celebration of 1621. And it’s a good example of uncritical food history that focuses entirely on food without much of the historical context (neither in the 1600s or 1900s).

Nov 27: THANKSGIVING! 🦃

16: Dec 2 - 4

Dec 2: Wrap-up 🎯

No readings for today, but some course wrap-up and tips for succeess on your final course reflection due next week!

Dec 4: NO CLASS 🎉

Dec 12: Finals Due 🏁

Your FINAL Learning Reflection—over the WHOLE CLASS—needs to be turned in BY THE END OF TODAY. See the Final Course Reflection Guide. I can’t emphasize enough that this SHOULD NOT BE MERELY A SUMMARY of what we’ve covered. Instead, as the instructions explain in more detail, illustrate how your thinking about food has changed over the month, and how your submitted work justifies what you think should be your overall grade for the course.