RELI 396/A (Fall 2024): FOOD AND RELIGION
What we eat and how we eat contributes to what we are. In this course, the examination of food cultures and food rituals will allow us to explore religious meanings and the making of communal and personal identities. The preparing and sharing of food defines religious community and expresses communal values. Feasts and fasts, food offerings and food prohibitions, hospitality and sacrifice present us with a vast array of opportunities to gain insight into human creativity and religious sensibility. In looking at foodways in several religions, this course will focus particularly on how food can serve as a medium of transmission and transaction, and on the roles that women and men, gods and ancestors, and other beings and forces have in these networks.
- Teacher: NORMA JOSEPH
- Teaching Assistant: Louise Laverty