Religion 396/2 - A FOOD AND RELIGION Thursday 13:15-16:00 Concordia University, Fall Instructors: Norma Joseph Leslie Orr

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1 Religion 396/2 - A FOOD AND RELIGION Thursday 13:15-16:00 Concordia University, Fall 2016 Instructors: Norma Joseph Leslie Orr norma.joseph@concordia.ca leslie.orr@concordia.ca Office: FA-201 (2060 Mackay); ext 4085 FA-303; , ext 2078 Office hours: Tu/Th 11:00-12:00 Tu/Th 4:30-5:30 TA: Claire English c771358@gmail.com Description: What we eat and how we eat contributes to what we are. In this course, the examination of food cultures and food rituals will allow us to explore religious meanings and the making of religious identities. The preparing and sharing of food defines religious community and expresses religious values. Feasts and fasts, food offerings and food prohibitions, hospitality and sacrifice present us with a vast array of opportunities to gain insight into human creativity and religious sensibility. In looking at foodways in several religions, this course will focus particularly on how food can serve as a medium of transmission and transaction, and on the roles that women and men, gods and ancestors, and other beings and forces have in these networks. Required reading: A course pack has been prepared for this course, containing all required readings. It is on sale at the Concordia University bookstore in the Library building. You MUST do all the readings in this coursepack.! Evaluation: Journals (2) & class participation % Food project 1: cookbook analysis (due October 6) % Food project 2: research essay (due November 24) % Take-home exam (due December 15) % You are expected to attend class meetings and -- having done the assigned reading in advance of each class as outlined below -- to participate in class discussions. You must keep a journal recording your own experiences, observations, and reflections related to the course content (food, religion) and hand in your journals for review on September 29, October 27, and/or November 10. You must hand in the September 29 journal. You may choose to hand in the second journal either on the October or the November deadline, but we advise the October one so you do not get overloaded toward the end of the term. If you enjoy the journal process, you may hand it in all three times. Get a small notebook for this purpose and start writing right away! You should plan to write in your journals at least twice a week. A detailed description of the food project assignment will be handed out in the early part of the term. There are two parts to the food project assignment. The first part is the a cookbook 1

2 analysis of approximately 1000 words (about four type-written pages), in which you will examine a cookbook for its religious and cultural content (what it conveys about values, ceremonies and rituals, the social and ethical dimensions of food preparation and consumption, etc.). The second part of the food project is a term paper (about 1500 words), which builds on part 1, exploring in more depth the place of food in the religious and cultural context you have chosen to examine. The take-home exam will be an essay-style exam. The questions will be distributed on the last day of class (December 1), and you must hand in your exam answers by noon on December 15. If you are unable to meet any of these deadlines, or to attend class regularly, you should discuss the situation with one of the instructors as soon as any difficulty becomes apparent. Normally extensions will be granted only for medical reasons (a doctor's note will be required) or very serious family or personal problems. All work for the course must be submitted by December 15 th. If this is impossible, you must both speak to one of the two instructors and make an application for late completion at the Student Service Centre in the Library building before January 15, Absolutely no late work for this course will be accepted after December 15, The University administration has become very strict in applying the regulations concerning Incompletes, and your instructors are not in a position to grant any leeway. If there is a medical condition that necessitates a longer extension for course completion, you should apply for a MED INC grade before the end of semester. Code of conduct Please familiarize yourselves with university regulations contained in the Concordia Undergraduate Calendar concerning academic misconduct (i.e. plagiarism and multiple submissions) and other offences of conduct (i.e. discrimination, harassment, violent or threatening behaviour). Any improper use of another s work will be reported to the Dean s office. Concordia University has several resources available to students to better understand and uphold academic integrity. Concordia's website on academic integrity can be found at the following address, which also includes links to each Faculty and the School of Graduate Studies: All incidents of suspected plagiarism will be reported to the Dean s office. Student Services Please see Concordia's web site under Student Learning Services There are different services available to you especially writing help, such as peer writing help and writing classes. Grading System A : Superior grasp of material, well written, excellent analysis, original insight and thought provoking presentation. B : Good understanding, clear and orderly presentation, application of concepts. C : Adequate grasp of material, reasonably clear. D : Evidence of reading, inadequate comprehension. F : Indicates that the student did not do the assignment or that the material handed in lacks evidence that the work was done. 2

3 Weekly Outline I. Introduction September 8: General introduction to course Ethnographic experience September 15: Diner, Hasia. Ways of Eating, Ways of Starving, Hungering for America. (Harvard Univesrity Press, 2001) Donna Gabaccia. Introduction: What do we Eat? We Are What We Eat. Donna Gabbacia, Harvard U Press, 1998, 1-9, Film II. Ethnic and national food icons September 22: Horner, Jennifer. Betty Crocker s Picture Cookbook, Journal of Communications Inquiry, 24:3 (July 2000) Schenone, Laura. Searching for Betty Crocker, A Thousand Years Over A Hot Stove. (NY: Norton, 2003). Charsley, S. Marriages, weddings and their cakes, Food, Health and Identity, ed. P. Caplan (London: Routledge, 1997) III. Eating a national identity September 29: Journal Assignment #1 due Finch, Martha L. Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty: Fasts and Thanksgivings in Early New England, in Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias, ed. E.M. Madden and M.L. Finch (Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 2006) pp Sarah Joseph Hale. Mother of Thanksgiving, in L. Schenone, A Thousand Years Over A Hot Stove. (NY: Norton, 2003) Siskind, J. The Invention of Thanksgiving, in Food in the USA: A Reader, ed. C.M.Counihan, (NY: Routledge, 2002) pp Lockwood, William and Yvonne Lockwood, Being American: an Arab American Thanksgiving, The Meal. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery Ed. Harlan Walker. Prospect Books III. Cookbooks: texts of social-history October 6: Nathalie Cooke. Canada s Food History Through Cookbooks, Critical Perspectives in Food Studies, Mustafa Koc, Jennifer Sumner and Anthony Winson eds. Oxford University Press 2012, Anne Bower. Cooking Up Stories: Narrative Elements in Community Cookbooks, Recipes 3

4 For Reading. Anne L. Bower ed. Amherst: U of Mass Press, 2007, Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote (NY: Macmillan, 2002) ACookbooks as Collective Memory and Identity@ p Kelly, T.M. If I were a Voodoo Priestess: Women s Culinary Autobiographies, Kitchen Culture in America, ed. S. Inness (U of Pennsylvania, 2001) IV. Diversity in food rules and regulations October 13: Food project part 1: cookbook analysis due Roden, C. The Jewish Dietary Laws of Kashrut, The Book of Jewish Food. (NY: Knopf, 1996) Buckser, A. Keeping Kosher: Eating and Social Identity in Denmark, Ethnology 38:3 (1999) Laidlaw, James. Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) chapter 14 (pp ) V. Feasting, Fasting and Feeding the gods October 20 Diouri, A. Of Leaven Foods: Ramadan in Morocco, in Culinary Cultures of the Middle East. ed. Zubaida and Tapper ( NY: Tauris, 1994) Singer, E. Conversion Through Foodways Enculturation: The Meaning of Eating in an American Hindu Sect. In Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity, ed. L.K. brown & K. Mussell (Knoxville: Univ of Tennessee Press, 1984) Farb, P. and G. Armelagos, Foods for the Gods, in Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating. By P.., Houghton Mifflin: Boston, Mass. 1980, pp VI. Body: Engaged and denied October 27: Journal Assignment #2 due Olivelle, P. From Feast to Fast: Food and the Indian Ascetic, in Rules and Remedies in Classical Indian Law, ed. J. Leslie (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991) pp Kelting, W. "Sallekhana: Food Purity and the Sacrifice of the Body." Paper presented at the Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, 1991 (10 pp.) Bynum, C. Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. C. Counihan & P. Van Esterik (NY: Routledge, 1997) pp VII. Gender and food November 3: Sered, Susan. Food and Holiness: Cooking as a Sacred Act among Middle-Eastern Jewish Women, in Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jul., 1988), pp Joseph, N. Food Gifts - Female Gifts Givers: A Taste of Jewishness, in Women and the Gift: Volume 2. Ed. Morny Joy. (Springer ) Van Esterik, P. Feeding their Faith: Recipe Knowledge among Thai Buddhist Women, in Food 4

5 and Gender: Identity and Power, ed. C.M. Counihan & S.L. Kaplan (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998) pp McGilvray, Dennis. Pukkai, in The Anthropologists Cookbook (Revised Edition), ed. Jessica Kuper (London: Kegan Paul International, 1997) pp FILM VIII. Food systems and food symbols November 10: Journal Assignment #3 (or required #2) due Douglas, M. Deciphering a Meal, in her Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) PASSOVER Seder: an experience of symbolic food eating Ashkenazi, Michael Food in the Passover Seder in The Meal, ed. Harlan Walker (272pp; Devon: Prospect Books, 2002), pp IX. Identities, Encounters, Diaspora, Globalization November 17: Tuchman, G. & J.G. Levine, ANew York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern,@ Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22/3 (1993) [05] Meyers, Alan R. and Anne R. Two Recipes from Southern Morocco, in The Anthropologists Cookbook (Revised Edition), ed. Jessica Kuper (London: Kegan Paul International, 1997) pp Greenebaum, Jessica. (2012) Veganism, Identity and the Quest for Authenticity, in Food, Culture & Society, 15:1, November 24: Food Project part 2 due. Mintz, S. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, chapter 3 (Boston: Beacon, 1996) (pp ). Narayan, Uma. Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity, and Indian Food in her Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism (NY: Routledge, 1997) pp , Dodson, J.E. & C.T. Gilkes, There s Nothing Like Church Food: Food and the U.S. Afro- Christian Tradition, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63/3 (1995) Beoku-Betts, Josephine. We got our way of cooking things: Women, Food and Preservation of Cultural Identity among the Gullah, in Gender and Society, vol. 9:5 (October 1955), pp X. Drinks on us December 1 Liberles, Robert, Coffee s Social Dimensions, in Jews Welcome Coffee, Brandeis University Press, 2012, chapter one. Tapper, R. Blood, Wine and Water: social and symbolic aspects of drink in Islamic Middle East, in Culinary Cultures of the Middle East. ed. Zubaida and Tapper ( NY: Tauris,1994)