Eating in the Big Apple: A History of Food in New York City
In this course, we will explore the food history of greater New York. Before the first human settlements on and around Manhattan, the region's geography and environment prepared future dietary and consumption patterns. The course begins by studying the significance of the retraction of the Wisconsin ice sheet and the resultant emergence of a rich food-bearing geography. We will look at available information about seasonal human foodways practiced within this region, pre-Contact. After the arrival of Europeans, colonists and generations of later New Yorkers established their own culturally and ecologically-informed foodways. The class will also consider how and why the city's food icons emerged and changed across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how new immigrant arrivals contributed to these transformations. These relationships between New York, its people, and food demonstrate how the past can be a guide for ecological sustainability in the present.
Wednesdays, 5:30-7:00 PM
January 10-31
$150 (4 sessions)
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