Topics in American Literature

In this class we will explore a perennially favorite subject: food. Surveying a range of genres--autobiography, travel and historical narratives, humor, poetry, cookbooks--we will seek to understand how *authorship* is constructed around those most visceral and primal of categories, taste and memory. Simply put, this course will investigate the role of eating and cooking in American literary identity. We may read from the works of M.F.K. Fisher and Ernest Hemingway, Vertamae Smart and Alice B. Toklas, to name a few; key scholars of food and commensality in human culture, such as Mary Douglas and Pierre Bourdieu, will also be assigned. Possible requirements: two or three papers and a project to be determined. Satisfies the Twentieth Century and later requirement.
Course Attributes: EN H; BU Hum; AS HUM; AS SD I; FA HUM; AR HUM; EL TC; EL NC; BU BA; AS SC; EL GML

Topics in American Literature

ENGLISH LITERATURE 423

Section 01