The Culture of Food & Wine in Italy

This course will introduce you to the textured cultural histories of Italian food and wine. Your approach will be a mixture of first-hand experience (field trips, guided visits and several tastings) and interpretative analysis (through the examination of selected food texts, your own written assignments, in-class debates and your entries in a personal food journal). Through a multi-disciplinary approach to food and wine you will address a broad variety of key contemporary issues including slow-food, organic foods and the origins (and preservation) of regional variations. You will also develop an awareness of more sophisticated ways of looking at food in the fields of food anthropology, the psychology of food consumption, the symbolic aspects of food and the social construction of its meaning.

In this course you'll see first-hand the historical evolution of Italian food, and you'll discover how a variety of factors have influenced how food is selected, prepared and eaten. Your close-up experience will begin with visiting local food markets (like San Lorenzo) and other food-selling venues.

One key objective of this multi-disciplinary course is to help you develop a sense of food as a fundamental cultural aspect not just of Italian but also of American society, and you will be empowered to reflect more critically on the varied cultural aspects of your own domestic food-experience.

If you are also enrolled on the Photography course you could submit a photographic documentary piece on an appropriate issue as part of this course's requirements.