The Culinary Imagination: Reading Culture Through Food, Cooking, and Eating
Food, cooking, and eating are biologically necessary and socially powerful: we produce and cook food to survive, but also to reinforce social bonds, to celebrate tradition, to evoke memories of home, to compete with other cooks, to impress the eater, and even to beguile and seduce.
This course will explore food in literature, particularly life narratives, cookbook selections, and films across different cultures and borders, from the transnational to local Vancouver contexts. The production of food is essentially linked to histories of empire, colonial power, capital, racialized and gendered labour, and ecological change. Our discussions will explore these intersections.
Readings will include selections from Gitanjali Shahani (Food and Literature), Amitav Ghosh (The Nutmeg’s Curse), Sandra Gilbert (The Culinary Imagination) , Monique Truong (The Book of Salt), MFK Fisher (How to Cook a Wolf), Cheuk Kwan (Have You Eaten Yet?), Fred Wah (Diamond Grill), and Austin Clarke (Pigtails ‘n’ Breadfruit). Tasteful excerpts from cookbooks by local artist Janice Wong and the local anthology edited by Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano, Eating Stories: A Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck, will be sampled. Films will include Babette’s Feast, Juzo Itami’s Japanese “noodle western” Tampopo, Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman, and the restaurant documentaries of Cheuk Kwan. See his fabulous website at http://www.chineserestaurants.tv.
We will host some class dialogue with food writers and filmmakers, and students will be able to research local restaurants, gardens, or farms as final projects.
Multimedia examples of previous student projects for my food-themed courses can be found at the following Richmond Museum exhibit, “Our Journeys Here” (2017-2018)
LITERARY TEXTS AND LIFE NARRATIVES
- Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (NeWest 1996)
- M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (North Point 1942) and The Gastronomical Me (North Point 1943; you might consider purchasing The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition which contains both of these Fisher titles and more
- Monique Truong, The Book of Salt (Mariner Books 2004)
- Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (U of Chicago P 1991)
- Austin Clarke, Pigtails‘n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir (Ian Randel, Anniversary Edition or any other edition, 2000);
- Daphne Marlatt and Robert Minden, Steveston (Ronsdale 2001)
- Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen), “Babette’s Feast” (short story)Optional: Andrea Stuart, Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire; (Vintage 2013)
FILMS
- Cheuk Kwan, Chinese Restaurants (2005 Tissa Films, documentary series). See https://www.cultureunplugged.com/storyteller/ckwan#/myFilms
- Ang Lee, Eat Drink Man Woman (1994); UBC Library streaming video
- Juzo Itami, Tampopo (1985); UBC Library streaming video
- Gabriel Axel, Babette’s Feast (1987): Amazon Prime; DVD @ UBC Library.
THEORY/HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
Selected works of theory and critical readings are available as e-texts through the UBC Library. We will usually consider one theoretical essay or chapter along with a primary text or film each week.