The famous French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once declared, ”Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Food is a cultural code that has the ability to reveal a person’s identity because a person’s taste in food and ways of consuming it are often cultivated and influenced by the culture in which he or she is being raised. Thus, studying food imagery in literature provides us an interesting way of reading and analyzing literature. In this course, we will examine how descriptions of food and food consumption in different texts enhance our understanding of humanity, the world we live in, and the cultures in which the texts are produced.

Students are expected to achieve the following objectives by the end of the course: 1. Learn to appreciate different cultures and customs through analyzing food imagery in literature produced by authors of different cultures. 2. Develop a sensibility toward language through close reading of various texts. 3. Learn to think critically and synthesize information through class discussions and careful textual analysis.

1. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
2. Simple’s Uncle Sam by Langston Hughes
3. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto