Final Essay

[cgao]

Please post your final essay here. 

[Amy Stamm]

The course “East Asian Foodways Across Borders” made the case that the under-studied topic of food and foodways, which is often delegitimized or overlooked as a valid academic subject, is not only an ideal subject to hook students’ curiosity and motivation, but also provides a complex entry point into multiple cultural and historical topics that can give students a nuanced grasp of global politics during different historical periods. The course introduced me to history that made me think about what changing eating practices can tell us about global events. For example, Jennifer Jung-Kim’s video lecture in Week 2 about the development of department stores in Japan and Korea, the introduction of Western foods/meals in the restaurants that anchored the experience of spending a day in these stores, and the status imbued on those who could afford to shop and eat in these new social centers illustrated a changing pattern of social interaction that was founded on the global exchange of products. Another interesting idea introduced in the course was how cultural values about meals, for example, Chinese communal/family eating vs. European individual eating became framed in terms of hygiene and notions of modernity. Frank Dikotter’s work showed how new technologies like enamelware, tin cans, and rice hulling machines “profoundly transformed the material culture of food,” as tins “democratized consumption” for those without money, allowed food to reach into remote areas, and provided nutrition when fresh foods weren’t readily available. These new technologies changed people’s eating habits and created new global systems of exchange for food products like Spam. These stories point to how I can use a familiar food or eating practice to teach my students complex about patterns of global trade, exchanges of cultural ideas and hierarchizing practices, and power.

This course gave me new ways of thinking about how to contextualize my students’ daily lives and eating practices within a historical and cultural frame. Because I work with incarcerated students, I am in the process of developing a curricular unit about Asian influences on prison food and prison practices of meal sharing, food trading, and recipe development. When I think about Frank Dikotter’s point that new technologies change people’s eating habits and create new global systems of exchange, I think about the vast U.S. prison commissary system, which relies on centralized distribution points, plastic packaging, and inexpensive products like ramen. Ramen serves multiple purposes within prison communities. It forms a base for many types of meals, as incarcerated folks mix it with other commissary and dining hall ingredients like sauces, freeze-dried and cooked vegetables, and tortilla chips. The spice packets found in packaged ramen are used to enhance the flavors in generally-dull dining hall meals and in multiple other ways. And ramen is used as a form of currency to purchase other products in the informal economy of jails and prisons. The accumulation of ramen represents the accumulation of power within the prison economy.

In order to help my students place themselves within the global migration of food, foodways, and cultural ideas about food, I plan to show them Jennifer 8. Lee’s TED Talk, “The Hunt for General Tso.” Lee talks about the prestige accorded different cuisines, which then fix hierarchical values to their creators (French cuisine vs. Japanese vs. Chinese vs. Filipino, for example), and importantly, she talks about all of the unrecognized history makers who have transformed U.S. (and global) eating habits. Lee’s investigation into the shorthands we rely on, the travel of ideas, the morphing of concepts and ingredients, and the new combinations of factors that become identified with particular countries would be of interest to my students, who have adapted constrained food choices to create an entirely unique culture of eating, sharing meals, and distributing power via food. I think Lee’s message about the unspoken heroes of food history will be important for my students, who often feel left out of history and who do not give themselves enough credit for their creativity and innovation in inventing new recipes, art practices, and other creative projects within the constraints of the carceral system.

I also plan to assign George Solt’s article on the history of ramen. I plan to collect students’ stories about their own relationships to ramen and their understanding of its roots before they read Solt’s essay. Their uses of ramen demonstrate the participatory, locally-based transformations of certain foods to meet local needs. Solt’s illustration of how ramen was used to remake the image of Japan as both hip and unthreatening shows food as an ambassador, something that can jump references – from anime to movies to fashion – and invites consumers into a kind of international pop culture world. His history of ramen will provide a global context to this common food that has been largely stripped of its history as it has become a more mainstream commodity in the U.S. I want to ask my students to evaluate why certain foods are more flexible and transformable in their uses and why it is important to understand the histories of food consumption and foodways that have created current eating habits in different local and “glocalized” contexts. I also plan to have students research and analyze Asian influences on federal and state prison commissary offerings. It would be fun to compare those influences to Latin American influences on prison commissary offerings and to hear students’ ideas about where this new knowledge takes them.

Another way that I plan to utilize the teachings of this course is to integrate Eric Rath’s attention to global warming and the contradictions between different nations’ fishing laws, which allow for the continued depletion of the world’s ocean life and the production of microplastics, into a climate change course that I teach. In addition to drawing our attention to overfishing, a lack of consistent international laws about ocean depletion, and the ocean pollution caused by disposable food products, Rath raises issues about the widespread mislabeling of seafood, and child labor and human trafficking in the fishing industry. These topics lend themselves perfectly to a student project tied to the Sunshine Movement. Students could research fishing laws or fishing trends and propose ways for nations to collaborate in order to sustain ocean populations and mitigate global pollution and global warming. They could investigate greener methods for packing and shipping food products transnationally. All of these topics are likely to ignite students’ imaginations about how their own personal eating and consuming habits are tied to much wider processes. Food is a great way to build students’ sense of their personal contributions to history and to engage them civically.

 

Citations

Dikötter, Frank. Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 219-239.

Jung-Kim, Jennifer (September 8, 2021). “East Asia’s Adaptation of Western Foods” video lecture.

Lee, Jennifer 8. “The Long March of General Tso,” in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food (New York: Twelve, 2008), 66-88.

Rath, Eric C., “The Global Spread of Sushi,” in Oishii: The History of Sushi (London: Reaktion Books, 2021), 137-175.

Solt, George. The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 162-177.

 

[Angela Lee]

Please see link for essay - Thanks!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r5pMsE8R1dn_HAEew8KrPfekfFeHHZicwsyZokcROTI/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

[Jennifer Smith]

East Asian Foodways Across Borders

While participating in the East Asian Foodways Across Borders I learned about many new resources that I plan to share with my students in the classroom. During the first week of the seminar we learned about some of the staples of East Asian cuisine. As a class, my students and I could explore these staples in greater detail and examine their use in our favorite cuisines as well. The discussion about chopsticks was also intriguing and I could have my science students explore the structure and function (a key aspect of the Next Generation Science Standards) of chopsticks as compared and contrasted with forks/spoons/sporks. 

Similarly, the discussion about different types of vending machines in East Asia would also work well in my science classroom as the students learned about the types of foods distributed by these machines. We could also explore the structure and functions of these machines, learning more about how they are made and how they operate.

I think my students would be most interested in the discussions about fast food restaurants though because this is something that they are all easily able to relate to and connect with. My students would be intrigued by the different types of menu items served in various countries in East Asia. We could discuss the availability of the items in association with supply and demand as well as by examining the growth/production of different food items in places around the world.

In general, I am most likely to share information about East Asian cuisine through the lens of science (perhaps in discussing nutritional content or how the food is made/processed). Because my students are in middle school, finding ways to introduce the topic and relate the information to their current schema will be vital. This means that sharing ideas about items such as fast food will be interesting and informative for my students.

 

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