Researching Cultures: Not a Piece of Cake: Culinary Crossroads of Latin American Cultures

This course explores from interdisciplinary perspectives the intersectional, transdisciplinary and cross-cultural dimensions of food in the Hispanic cultures of South and Central America, the Caribbean, and their respective (Latinx) diasporas. Using a combination of literary texts, artwork, testimonials, films, and scholarly articles, we will look at food, both as material commodity and metaphor, through the lens of Hispanic America's colonial and postcolonial past. Some topics include ethnic and gender identities, the history of enslavement and plantation economy (sugar, coffee), African-descendant and Indigenous spirituality as it pertains to food rituals, interplay of migration and exile in culinary transformations, along with multiple perspectives on everyday life (hunger, diets and dieting, food rationing, etc.). Due to the interdisciplinary perspectives inherent to this course, students will have an opportunity to engage their knowledge of and interest in disciplines outside the humanities (including but not limited to: sociology, psychology, public health, anthropology, global studies) in the exploration of food/gastronomy/culinary cultures, past, present, and future. This course has a substantial, mandatory and graded written communications component and is taught in Spanish. It also fulfills the Writing Intensive (WI) requirement for Arts and Sciences students. Prereq. Spanish 303 and at least one Debating Cultures (32XX). Students who have taken more than four Spanish Debating/Researching classes are not allowed in this course and must proceed to a Major Seminar (4XX).
Course Attributes: EN H; AS HUM; AS LCD; AS WI I; FA HUM; AR HUM; AS SC; BU Hum; BU IS

Researching Cultures: Not a Piece of Cake: Culinary Crossroads of Latin American Cultures

SPANISH 3621

Section 01