This course will examine the rhetoric surrounding food and food production in contemporary American culture. It will analyze everything from food manifestos, editorials and columns by food critics, advertisements, grocery stores, fast food restaurants, our own Student Union and local eateries, to the Food Network and the celebrity of chefs in an effort to understand competing visions of food’s role in human life. This course will attempt to answer the following: What assumptions and values underlie the divergent representations of food in American culture? How does availability and price shape our attitudes toward food and eating? How do ads and packaging make arguments? How does context shape our relationship to food and eating? What contexts shape our relationship to food? How do they do it? What do your food choices argue about your values?
In this course, we will use the tools of rhetorical analysis to think, read, research and write critically about issues concerning food representation in both print and visual media.