What is food? A thing we eat, a creator of cultures, an all-encompassing system? An object, a process, a way of understanding ourselves? A way to altogether reimagine study and practice in the first place?
Food Studies: Matter, Meaning, Movement is a new open-access textbook. Speaking to early undergraduate learners, it brings together 60 chapters that cover themes ranging from cultural identity to the financialization of food, breastfeeding to the foodways of rural Kyrgyzstan, eating disorders to backyard chicken farming.
I had the pleasure of contributing a chapter that draws from my experience teaching food studies at LMU Munich. Each of my classes assigns a menu analysis. But how can you look beyond your own appetite in order to read menus as cultural texts? “Today’s Special” answers this question. And this video offers a preview of my chapter.
Food Studies: Matter, Meaning, Movement is available for free online, both as a PDF and as an e-publication.