Required Readings
- Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Harvard University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780674050785. [Preview with Google Books]
- Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness & Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1986, or newer edition. ISBN: 9780140092332.
- White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. Hill and Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832.
Suggested Readings
- Tise, Larry. “Why Is Our Thanksgiving Bird Called a Turkey?” History News Network, November 2008.
- Douglass, Frederick. Excerpts from chapters 6–7 in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Dover Publications, 2003.[Preview with Google Books] [Excerpt]
Key
[P] = Primary Source Reading
[S] = Secondary Source Reading
| SES# | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | [P] Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1986. ISBN: 9780140092332. |
| 2 | Modern Ingredients |
[S] McNeill, J.R. and McNeill, William H. “Shifting to Food Production, 11,000–3,000 Years Ago.” In The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. ISBN: 9780393051797. [S] Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1986. ISBN: 9780140092332. [S] Norton, Marcy. “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics.” The American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 660–91. |
| 3 | Factories in the Fields |
[P] Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Dover Publications, 2003. [Preview with Google Books] [Excerpt] [S] Hahamovitch, Cindy. “Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective 1.” Labour History 44, no. 1 (2003): 69–94. [S] Wilkinson, Alec. Big Sugar: Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida. Akfred A. Knopf, 1989, pp. 3–19. ISBN: 9780394573120. Films: Black Sugar. Directed by Hank Friedmann. Color, 12 min. 1988 or The Price of Sugar. Directed by Bill Hany. Color, 90 min. 2007. |
| 4 | Food Factories |
[P] Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Signet, 1906, pp. vi-x and 26–42. ISBN: 9780553212457. [2002 Modern Library] [P] Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. Oxford University Press, 1948, pp. 169–208 and 209–46. [S] Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. Basic Books, 1983. ISBN: 9780465047314. |
| 5 | American Agriculture |
[S] Pursell, Carroll. Chapter 4 in A Companion to American Technology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. ISBN: 9781405179942. [S] Freidberg, Susanne E. Triumph of the Egg. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 2 (2008): 400–23. [S] Howard-Smith, Kendra. “Antibiotics and Agricultural Change: Purifying Milk.” Agricultural History 84, no. 3 (2010): 327–51. Film: King Corn. Directed by Aaron Woolf. Color, 88 min. 2007. |
| 6 | What (Not) to Eat |
[S] Shapin, Steven. “Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Dietetic Medicine.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77, no. 2 (2003): 263–97. [S] Brumberg, Joan Jacobs*.* Chapter 3 in Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa. Plume, 1989. ISBN: 9780452263277. [S] Shprintzen, Adam D. The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement, 1817–1921. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013, pp. 10–38. ISBN: 9781469608914. [Preview with Google Books] [S] ———. “Looks Like Meat, Smells Like Meat, Tastes Like Meat.” Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 15, no. 1 (2012): 113–28. |
| 7 | Abundance |
[P] Malthus, Thomas Robert. [P] United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook. The Yearbook of Agriculture. U. S. Goverment Printing Office, 1968. [S] Belasco, Warren. “The Debate: Will the World Run Out of Food?” In Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food. University of California Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780520250352. [Preview with Google Books] [S] Nunn, Natha and Qian, Nancy. “The Potato’s Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence from a Historical Experiment.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 126, no. 2 (2011): 593–650. |
| 8 | Individual Meetings to Discuss Paper Proposal | No new readings assigned. |
| 9 | Hunger |
[S] Jacobs, Meg. “How About Some Meat?: The Office of Price Administration, Consumption Politics, and State Building from the Bottom Up, 1941–1946.” The Journal of American History 84, no. 3 (1997): 910–41. [S] Cullathur, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Harvard University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780674050785. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 10 | Supermarkets |
[S] Hamilton, Shane. “The Economies and Conveniences of Modern-Day Living: Frozen Foods and Mass Marketing, 1945–1965.” The Business History Review 77, no. 1 (2003): 33–60. [S] Araiza, Lauren. “In Common Struggle against a Common Oppression: The United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party, 1968–1973.” The Journal of African American History 94, no. 2 (2009): 200–23. [S] Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 211–36. ISBN: 9780195055436. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 11 | American Cuisine |
[P] “The Oriental Grill Menu (1916)” & “Ship’s Service Menu, Guantanamo Bay (1946)” [P] Berolzheimer, Ruth. The Greater American Cookbook. Culinary Arts Institute, 1940. [S] Russek, Audrey. “Appetites without Prejudice: U. S. Foreign Restaurants and the Globalization of American Food Between the Wars.” Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment 19, no. 1–2 (2011): 34–55. [S] Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Harper Perennial, 2001. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 12 | Nature |
[S] Soluri, John. “Accounting for Taste: Export Bananas, Mass Markets, Panama Disease.” Environmental History 7, no. 3 (2002): 386–410. [S] Boyd, William. “Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production.” Technology and Culture 42, no. 4 (2001): 631–64. [S] White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. Hill and Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832. |
| 13 | Novelty and Tradition |
[P] Portinari, Folco. “Slow Food Manifesto.” December 10, 1989. [S] Paxson, Heather. “Cheese Cultures: Transforming American Tastes and Traditions.” Gastronomica 10, no. 4 (2010): 35–47. [S] Bilger, Burkhard. “Squirrel and Man.” The New Yorker, July 2000, 58. [S] Scholliers, Peter. “Novelty and Tradition: The New Landscape for Gastronomy.” In Food: The History of Taste. Edited by Paul Freedman. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780520254763. |
| 14 | Potluck | No new readings assigned. |
