Linked to ideas of the globalization of food are ideas about gender and gendered food habits. Consider the role that gender plays in your family’s food habits.

It is often said that what we eat is what we are. In the U.S. and around the world, what we eat has vastly changed over time—both where we eat (home, restaurants, fast food places) and what we eat— from Spam at home in the 1940s and 50s to mango smoothies at Burger King in 2016-7. These changes in eating practices represent global shifts in food exchange and consumption practices . But since foods mark our identities and our lifestyles, they are a good introduction to the everyday global encounters of all of us. After all, the hot chilies that many of us associate with Indian food came from Mexico and Peru after the Americas were ‘discovered’ in the 15th century..

So: answer one of these questions:

1. Linked to ideas of the globalization of food are ideas about gender and gendered food habits. Consider the role that gender plays in your family’s food habits. Based on interviews with at least two family members (or two members from another family), consider the role that gender plays in issues such as these: a) in what is chosen for a meal; b) who cooks it (and who cooks which dishes); c) who decides when new foods are brought into your family’s diet; d) does gendered food preparation and choice change for special events (holiday, birthdays, parties for kin or neighbors, etc). When feasible and relevant, consider your family’s ethnic and/or class make-up as related to issues of gendered food habits.

Or

2. Do a food history of your family—what are the changes in eating in your daily lives over the last x years? Consider questions such as these: What has entered you family repertoire from the global supermarket of foods? What roles does globalization play in your family’s food history? To what extent does ethnic or other identity (including socio-economic class) play in your family’s food history? How do these identity concerns connect with changes in accessibility to the global supermarket? (If you are not from the U.S., consider changes in the foods of your home country as changed by globalization and how they are make their way to your family table.)

Answer with a 4-5 page essay (approximately 1200 to 1500 words). Make sure you have an introduction and a conclusion. Support your paper with actual examples: do not generalize. You may use quotations from either family members or the people whom you interview to support your argument.

Use your readings and lecture notes to develop key analytics ideas and to support your answers. You must use ideas from at least three of the assigned readings and ideas from at least three of the lectures to support your argument. When possible, summarize ideas from a reading (with the reference) rather than quoting the reading. Use quotations from the readings sparingly.

On Sept. 13, we will discuss how to organize your paper.

Papers that do not reflect the required numbers of readings and lectures will receive a D at best.

You will be graded on content – ideas related to the assigned questions--and on writing—grammar, style, spelling, organization.

Here are some questions that you could consider for your interviews with your consultants:

For Question 1

· What does each think about foods that they like that others, especially not of the same gender, do not like.

· Who cooks which foods? Are there special settings (holidays, party, summer BBQs, etc.) where one gender cooks (at least some of the foods).

· Do they see any foods that they now eat that they didn’t eat before they were married? What foods did their spouse bring into the family? Who cooks them? How were they learned?

· Are there special foods that are prepared and served by your grandparents? For which of your parents? Why?

· Who introduces new foods to the family?

For Question 2:

· What new foods are there from what regions of the world does your family eat now but did not eat 15/20/30/40 years ago?

· What has been dropped from your family food repertoire? Do your mother and father remember meals that they were served as children that they never make any more? (E.g., my mother made baked beans every Sunday. I have never made them from scratch and hardly ever serve them, even from a can).

· Are there any changes in holiday foods?

· Does your family mix foods that come from your places of ‘origin’ with foods that mark those holidays as “American”?

· When you eat out, what kinds of foods do you eat? Why these choices? Are they different than when you were small? What restaurants did your parents eat in when young?

· What ‘different’ foods do you like or not like?

· Does you family like ‘exotic’ or new foods? Why or why not? What makes them attractive?