Cuisine, Culture, and Identity
Course Description
Summary
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” –Brillat-Savarin
While food sustains life, it also gives it meaning. This course will focus on how the culture of food and eating has played an important role in the construction of the religious, national, ethnic, and individual identities of the French-speaking world. How have migration and the realities of the post-colonial world transformed cuisine and national identity? How does cuisine allow the French to challenge an American dominated world? We will consider the worldview French food products and practices reflect and make comparisons with our own culinary cultures. This course will offer a systematic review of the foundations of French grammar as well as offer practice at perfecting oral and written expression. Intermediate-low level. Conducted in French.
Learning Outcomes
- -understanding how cuisine functions as an element of culture and how it expresses national and ethnic values
-challenging stereotypes about French culture and cuisine by highlighting the importance of migration and cross-cultural contact on French national identity
-understanding complex cultural practices and their contexts
-review grammatical structures
-improve speaking and listening abilities through the use of authentic materials
-creating with language at the complex sentence level
-developing strategies for reporting information in writing and orally
-developing strategies for presenting arguments and hypotheses
Prerequisites
Permission of faculty (based on an appropriate language proficiency level, generally 2-3 years high school French or previous coursework at Bennington).
Please contact the faculty member : sshapiro@bennington.edu
Corequisites
Attendance at CSL Speaker Series events
Attendance (2 times) French Table