Instructor:
Everyone eats – even the gods! When people eat together, they create commensal moments (“eating at the same table”) of shared experiences and values. Food is a multi-sensory experience – it evokes all of our senses! We see, smell, taste, hear, and touch food. Our aesthetic experiences marinate religion and culture with all our senses; by “consuming religion” people ingest their religious and cultural heritages. This course will nourish us with experiences of creating food, analyzing food and foodways, appreciating the artistic performance of religion through food as both symbolic and literal object as we savor a comparative study of religious traditions. Our focus is global, yet local, with diverse flavor notes allowing us to taste the lived, experiential role that food and foodways play in religious communities. Cooking, presentation, and ritual are all artistic expressions of values, ideologies, and identities.