*Please note that the readings are subject to change.

Week 1: Introduction (16-18 January)

16 January

• Syllabus overview

18 January: Why Study Food and Alcohol?

In interrogating the two assigned articles for the week, we will explore the problems surrounding the definitions of these key terms and collectively attempt to formulate working meanings for them that will guide our ensuing discussions. Applying our cultural lens…

• To read in full:
  • The Grain and the Grape
  • Our 9,000-Year Love Affair With Booze – National Geographic
  • Carole A. Travis-Henikoff, “The Incredible Foods We Eat, ”Dinner with a Cannibal: The Complete History of Mankind’s Oldest Taboo
    (Santa Monica: Santa Monica Press, 2008), 31-54

Week 2 (23-25 January):

by 23 January: Early Civilization: Geography, Technology and their Relationships to Food and Drink

• To read in full:
  • Marshall Sahlins, “The Original Affluent Society,” in Stone Age Economics
  • Stefan Nowicki, “Menu of the Gods. Mesopotamian Supernatural Powers and Their Nourishment, with Reference to Selected Literary Sources“
  • Bunimovitz and Greenberg, “Revealed in Their Cups: Syrian Drinking Customs in Intermediate Bronze Age Canaan“
  • “The Blood of Grapes: Viticulture and Intoxication in the Hebrew Bible” (399-419), in  Drinking in Ancient Societies: History and Culture of Drinks in the Ancient Near East. Papers of a Symposium held in Rome, May 17-19, 1990. Ed. Lucio Milano (Padova, 1994). 

25 January:

• We will work to narrow down your topic ideas for your final project.
  • Look over some of the resources to find potential research topics related to an aspect of how food and drink shape(d) society.
  • Using your usual research methods, gather some data and sources about a topic of your choice.
  • Take notes along the way as you do your research. What are your search strategies? How successful are you at finding useful material? What are your criteria for judging what is reliable and useful and what is not?

Week 3 (30 January-1 February):

30 January: 

• We will have a movie screening today…my fault in not hyper-linking the readings

1 February: Divine Gifts and Divine Orders – The Americas and India

• To read in full:

  • Brian Smith, “Eaters, Food, and Social Hierarchy in Ancient India: A Dietary Guide to a Revolution of Values“

  • Brian Stross, “Food Foam and Fermentation in Mesoamerica“

  • Christine Hastorf, “Andean luxury foods: special food for the ancestors, deities and the élite“

  • Friedrich Max Müller, The Upanishads (Oxford, 1900), (PDF START PAGE 103-127)

  • Look at image of Chávin god of food, images of Nazca “geoglyphs,” Moche pottery, and Incas. (Comparative)

     

Week 4  (6-8 February):

6 February: The Spread of Culture in the Classical Age – The Grammar Eating and  Drinking

To read in full:

• Excerpts from Pliny’s Natural History, Book 20.

• John F. Donahue, “Toward a Typology of Roman Public Feasting“

• “Peter Garnsey, Introduction (‘Food, substance and symbol’) in Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: University Press, 1999), pp. 1-11.

• John M. Wilkins and Shaun Hill, Chapter 2 (‘Social Context’) in Food in the Ancient World (Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 164-184.

• The Dinner of Trimalchio in The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, Volume II, Chapter 27-78 (and as much else as you can/wish). Select the link ‘Petronius Arbiter: The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, trans. by W. C. Firebaugh, contrib. by Francois Nodot, Jose Marchena, and De Salas (Illustrated Gutenberg HTML)

Homework due on 6 February 

• A copy of your Research Proposal for your final project is due in class. (This accounts for 5% of your final project grade).

8 February: African Power, Practice, and Performance (Jesse & Caroline)

• To read in full:
  • James McCann, Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine, Chapter 1 “Basic Ingredients“
  • Walter Sangree, “The Social Functions of Beer Drinking in Bantu Tiriki“
  • Jeffrey Fleisher, “Rituals of Consumption and the Politics of Feasting on the Eastern African Coast, AD 700–1500“
  • Henry Kam Kah, “The Laimbwe Ihneem Ritual_Ceremony Food Crisis and Sustainability in Cameroon“
• Skim for overall reference: Dietler M. 2001. “Theorizing the feast: rituals of consumption, commensal politics, and power in African context“

Week 5:  (13-15 February)

13 February: “Geography is to space as history is to time”: Byzantium

• To read in full:

  •  Paul Freedman, “Spices and Late Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value,” Speculum 80, no. 4, (2005). 

  • Tastes of Byzantium: The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire by Andrew Dalby, READ – “Tastes and Smells of the City” and “Water and Wine, Monks and Travellers”

  • Andrew Dalby, “Christmas Dinner in Byzantium“

15 February: Medieval Consumption Habits and Cultural Developments in the Medieval World (Gloria)

• To read in full:
  • Caroline Walker Bynum, “Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women,” in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 138-158.
  • Martha Carlin, “Provisions for the Poor: Fast Food in Medieval London,” Chapter 3 in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe
  • Patricia Fumerton, “Not Home: Alehouses, Ballads, and the Vagrant Husband in Early Modern England“
  • Judith Bennett,”These Things Must Be if We Sell Ale,” in Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600.
• PRIMARY SOURCES TO SKIM, IF YOU CHOOSE: Short selections from A Book of Cookrye, by A. W., London, 1591.  Originally published 1584.

Week 6:  (20-22 February)

20 February: Spices and the Rise of Global Trade 

• To read in full:
  • Andrew Dalby, Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices, “The Phoenix Nest“
  • Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination, “Introduction: Spices a Global Commodity“
  • Frederic Lane, “The Mediterranean Spice Trade Further Evidence of its Revival in the Sixteenth Century“
  • Amrita Sen, Trading India: Commerce, spectacle, and otherness, in early modern England, “Introduction”

Week 7:  (27 February-1 March)

27 February: For the Love of Chocolate (Francesca & Erin M.)

• To read in full:
  • Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate,”The Tree of the Food of the Gods” (New York, 1996)
  • Ross Jamieson, “The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine Dependencies in the Early Modern World“
  • Marcy Norton; Conquests of Chocolate, OAH Magazine of History, Volume 18, Issue 3, 1 April 2004, Pages 14–17
  • Marcy Norton,“Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics,” The American Historical Review (2006) 111:3, 660-691.
• PRIMARY SOURCE TO SKIM FOR CONTEXT:
  • Diaz, Bernal. “Montezuma’s Banquet.” The Food History Reader: Primary Sources, 2013

2 March: Quintessential Japan: Cuisine and Culture (Autumn & Corinne)

• To read in full:
  • Ashkenazi & Jacob, Food Culture in Japan – Chapter 1 “Historical Overview“
  • Brian Moeran, “Drinking Country – Flows of Exchange in Japanese Societies“
  • Varley, “Chanoyu from the Genroku Epoch to Modern Times”
  • Ohnuki Tierney, Rice as Self, “Rice as Wealth, Power, and Aesthetics“

Annotated Bibliography due in class

Week 8: Spring Break!!!! (6-8 March)

Week 9:  (13-15 March)

13 March: 

15 March: The Tradition of Coffee and Coffeehouses among the Turks (Christine & Wyatt)

• To read in full:

  • Emınegül Karababa Gülız Ger, “Early Modern Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture and the Formation of the Consumer Subject“

  • Markman Ellis, The Coffee-House: A Cultural History, Chapters 1 “First Encounters” and 2 “The Wine of Islam Discovered”

• Selma Akyazici Özkoçak, “Coffeehouses: Rethinking the Public and Private in Early Modern Istanbul
• (PRIMARY SOURCE FOR CONTEXT) From Modern History Sourcebook, “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Dining With The Sultana, 1718,” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1718montague-sultana.html.

Week 10:  (20-22 March)

20 March: WORK ON YOUR HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

22 March: Sugar, Colonialism, and Changing European Consumption Habits (Emily L. & Kathryn)

• Readings by 
  • Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Chapter 4: “Power”
  • Austen and Smith, “Private Tooth Decay as Public Economic Virtue: The Slave-Sugar Triangle, Consumerism, and European Industrialization“
  • David Richardson, “The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748-1776“
  • David Singerman,“The Shady History of Big Sugar,” The New York Times, September 16, 2016, A17

Week 11: (27-29 March)

27 March: Colonizing the New World: Alcohol, Coffee, Tobacco and Slavery (Lindsey & Jessie)

• Readings by 16 March:
  • Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, “Coffee Colonizes the World“
  • Frederick Smith, “Spirits And Spirituality: Alcohol In Caribbean Slave Societies“
  • Rudi Matthee, “Exotic Substances: the Introduction and Global Spread of Tobacco, Coffee, Cocoa, Tea and Distilled Liquor, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in Roy Porter and Mikulás Teich, eds., Drugs and Narcotics in History (Cambridge, 1995)
  • E.R. Billings, Tobacco Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce, Chapter V “Tobacco in Europe Continued“

Historiographical Essay DUE IN CLASS (27 March)

NEW DATE 3 APRIL 29 March: The Rise of Pernicious Liquors and the Flood of Rum (Dylan)

• Readings by 16 March
  • Nicholls, James. “A Monstrous Plant,” The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England. Manchester University Press, 2009.
  • Frederick Smith, ” At the Margins of the Atlantic World: Rum in the Seventeenth Century” (Chapter 4)

Week 14: (17-19 April)

NEW DATE 19 APRIL 17 April: A Nation of Drunkards – Striving for a Dry Nation (Cole & Danny)

• Readings by 12 April
  • Salinger,“The Tavern Degenerate” (210-­‐240)
  • Watch: Episode 1: A Nation of Drunkards (it’s broken up  into shorter clips)
  • Nicholls, “A monstrous theory: the politics of prohibition” (109-­‐129)

NEW DATE 24 APRIL 19 April: Drinking Rituals: Identity, Politics, and Civil Society (World Wars) (Nicole )

• Readings by 17 April:
  • Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf, Chapter 1 (Macmillan, 1988), first published 1942.
  • Jan Thompson,  “Prisoners of the Rising Sun: Food Memories of American POWs in the Far East During World War II,” in Food and Memory: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 2000, ed. Harlan Walker (London: Prospect Books, 2001), pp. 273-86
  • Lizzie Collingham, “Introduction” from The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food”
  • Recipes:Camp Harmony (Japanese-American internment camp, Puyallup, Washington): descriptions of daily meals (1942)US Naval Base, Port Hueneme, California: Thanksgiving dinner menu (1944)

    US Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: Ship’s Service Restaurant menu (1946)

OUTLINE FOR FINAL PROJECT DUE IN CLASS – APRIL 24 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 15: (24-26 April)

• OPTIONAL Readings for 26 April: Urban Markets and Haute Cuisine
  • George Perec, “Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and the Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four,” Granta 52 (December, 1995)
• Readings by 26 April: For the Love of Craft: Brewing, Distilling, and Drinking Today
  • Nicholls, “The pub and the people: drinking places and popular culture“
  • Nicholls, “Beer orders: the changing landscape in the 1990s “
  • Nicholls, ” Conclusion: the drink question today“