MCH2013 : Gender, Food and Communication (Inactive)

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Semester 2 Credit Value: 20
ECTS Credits: 10.0
European Credit Transfer System

Aims

How does food impact our lives? In what ways can we use food to help us understand our personal identities and our social world? And how does gender shape what and how we eat as well as the meanings we attach to it?

This course aims to develop student’s understanding of the relationship between gender and food culture. We identify food both as a medium of communication and as a socially constructed practice intimately tied with the formation of gender distinctions and gender norms. We discuss the history and practices of food preparation and consumption and take a gendered approach to examine such topics as meaning, discourse, identity, sexuality, ideology, politics, capitalism, and globalization. An intersectional approach is taken wherein issue of class, race, and ethnicity are considered with respect how they relate to the connection between gender and food culture specifically. We finish off with a section on social justice and the biopolitics of food culture.

Outline Of Syllabus

Readings/Lecture Focus:

Taste lifestyle (Bourdieu, Featherstone)

Food as symbol (Barthes, Mead)

Gender and Foodways
"Conflict and Deference" Marjorie Devault (FaC)
"Hunger as Ideology" Susan Bordo (EC)
"Who Deserves a Break Today? Fast Food, Cultural Rituals and Women's Place" Kate Kane (FUSA)

Ethical Consumption + Environmentalism
Barnett, Cloke, Clarke, and Malpass, "Consuming Ethics: Articulating the Subjects and Spaces of Ethical Consumption"
Littler, "Cosmopolitan Caring: Globalization, Charity, and the Activist-Consumer"
Connolly and Prothero, "Green Consumption: Life-Politics, Risk and Contradictions"

New Media
Caldwell, Alison. “Will Tweet for Food: Micoblogging Mobile Food Trucks–Online, Offline, and In Line.” Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World, 306- 321. Edited by Psyche A. Williams-Forson and Carole Counihan. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Fonseca, Vanessa. “Targeting Hispanics/Latinos Beyond Locality: Food, Social Networks, in Online Shopping.” In The New Cultures of Food Marketing Opportunities from Ethnic, Religious and Cultural Diversity, 163-79. Edited by Adam Lindgreen and Martin K. Hingley. Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT : Gower Pub. Co., 2009
Television
Adema, Pauline. “Vicarious Consumption: Food, Television and the Ambiguity of Modernity.” Journal of American Culture 23.3 (2000): 113-23.
Brunsdon, Charlotte. “Feminism, Postfeminism, Martha, Martha, and Nigella.” Cinema Journal 44.2 (Winter 2005): 106-16.

Postcolonialism and Globalization
Forth, Christopher E. “Fat, Desire and Disgust in the Colonial Imagination.” History Workshop Journal 73.1 (Spring 2012): 211-39.
Houston, Lynn Marie. “‘Making Do’: Caribbean Foodways and the Economics of Postcolonial Literary Culture.” MELUS 32.4, Food in Multi-Ethnic Literatures (Winter 2007): 99- 113.
Ram, Uri. “Liquid Identities: Mecca Cola versus Coca-Cola.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10.4 (Nov. 2007): 465-84.

Race/Ethnicity
Tuchman, Gaye and Levine, Harry, "New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern”, in Shortridge,
B. & Shortridge, J., (Eds.) The Taste of American Place. Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, (163 - 186) (ONLINE)
Poe, Tracey, “The Origins of Soul Food in Black Urban Identity: Chicago, 1915-1947 (USA, 91-108)
Narayan, U. Eating cultures: Incorporation, identity and Indian food.

Documentary screenings followed by discussion
Feeding Frenzy,
We Feed the World, Out Here

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities
Category Activity Number Length Student Hours Comment
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesLecture1200:00200:00tbc
Total200:00
Teaching Rationale And Relationship

N/A

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Exams
Description Length Semester When Set Percentage Comment
Oral Presentation102A20N/A
Other Assessment
Description Semester When Set Percentage Comment
Written exercise2A251,500 word critical review/case study
Essay2A402,500 words
Design/Creative proj2A15Participation / contribution
Assessment Rationale And Relationship

N/A

Reading Lists

Timetable