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Food, Culture & Politics
Art: Didier Descouens, 1655 - Frontispiece of Museum Wormiani Historia, Taken on… · Public domain
- Instructor
- Prof. Heather Paxson
- Term
- Fall 2019
- Level
- Undergraduate
- What's inside
- 1 reading · 1 other file · 3 web pages
- Materials open
- MIT OCW
About this course
Source: MIT OpenCourseWare 21A.155 Food, Culture & Politics, Fall 2019, Prof. Heather Paxson — original course page on ocw.mit.edu ↗. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Study order: MIT's own listing order, section by section. Taken from MIT's published course files, downloaded from ocw.mit.edu on September 23, 2026. How RedLectern is built.
Materials are grouped the way MIT organized them. A verified, course-wide order has not been established here.
Before you start
Prerequisites are not listed here. Check MIT's own syllabus for this course.
How this course was organized
What's here, and what isn't
- A lecture sequence of 27 items is confirmed. It stays as organized materials rather than a full course order.
Not included here
99 items from the source could not be safely included:
- MIT's page format for this item wasn't recognized clearly enough to place it safely. (99 items)
Materials by section
Grouped by section, as MIT organized them. Not sequenced or ordered.
Assignments
Course outline
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Lecture 2: Food paradoxes and dilemmas in the US
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Lecture 3: Food and power in the global arena
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Lecture 4: Waste amidst plenty In-class viewing and discussion: BUFFET: All You Can Eat Las Vegas . Directed by Natasha Schüll. Color, 30 min. 2006. In-class discussion: “What Makes a Critical Essay”
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Lecture 5: Cheap meat and expensive fish Written Assignment 1: Cheap Meat distributed
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Lecture 6: Good food is culinarily authentic
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Lecture 7: Good food is culturally authentic In-class viewing and discussion: Excerpt from The Meaning of Food . Series directed by Maria Gargiulo, Vivian Kleiman, Kris Kristensen, and Karin Williams. Color, 180 min. 2004.
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Lecture 8: Good food is convenient
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Lecture 9: Good food tastes good In-class tasting: Chocolate
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Lecture 10: Good food feeds relationships
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Lecture 11: Good food is symbolically pure In-class exercise: Bring in a photo of a meal you’ve eaten in the past week. ITEMIZE and DECIPHER it as A MEAL , offering a symbolic, structural reading akin to Mary Douglas’s. Why (and in what contexts) does this count as a “meal”? This meal might be representative of your daily diet, or an exception to it. We are not being food police here, but rather doing symbolic analyses of empirical data.
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Lecture 12: In-class writing workshop with Karen Pepper, lecturer, MIT Comparative Media Studies / Writing Brainstorming / free-write for final papers, tips for doing library research, follow-up on deciphering exercise Written Assignment 3: Food Memory distributed
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Lecture 13: Good food reminds you of your mother (or homeland or childhood) In-class viewing and discussion: Excerpt from Ratatouille . Directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava. Color, 111 min. 2007. Excerpt from The Meaning of Food . Series directed by Maria Gargiulo, Vivian Kleiman, Kris Kristensen, and Karin Williams. Color, 180 min. 2004.
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Lecture 14: On gastropolitics Written Assignment 4: Food Memory, Revisited distributed
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Lecture 15: Good food is nutritional In-class viewing and discussion: Excerpt from Frontline: Diet Wars . Directed by Jon Palfreman. Color, 60 min. 2004. “ Eat the Butter .” YouTube. Final Paper Proposal information distributed
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Lecture 16: Good food is (engineered to taste) real In-class peer-reviewing of final paper proposals—bring 2 hard copies to class to share with peers
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Lecture 17: Good food is appreciated, not appropriated
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Lecture 18: Good food is medicinal Guest lecture: Alex Rewegan , MIT-HASTS
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Lecture 19: Any food is good food if you’re hungry
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Lecture 20: Good food is just In-class viewing: Food Forward, Ep. 8: Food (Justice) For All . Directed by Greg Roden. Color, 24 min. (**View the first story—Salinas, CA) In-class tasting: Vermont cheese
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Lecture 21: Good food is sense-ible/able
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Lecture 22: How good is the future of agriculture? In-class viewing: The Future of Food . Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia. Color, 88 mins. 2004.
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Lecture 23: Guest lecture: Andrea McClave, MIT Integrated Design & Management , on developing an MIT food map app
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Lecture 24: Thanksgiving
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Lecture 25: Good food sustains us
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Lecture 26: Final paper panel presentations
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Lecture 27: Potluck and final paper panel presentations Bring to class a food item of significance to you (perhaps a nostalgia food, or an item from the meal you deciphered, etc.). Be prepared to speak briefly about your offering for our feast.
MIT OpenCourseWare, Prof. Heather Paxson, 21A.155 Food, Culture & Politics, Fall 2019.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Edition: Fall 2019 · Open the original course on OCW ↗
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