ANTH 311 A: The Cultural Politics of Diet and Nutrition

Useful Links

Class Schedule

Slack Dough Sourdough Bread

Gluten Free Sourdough Bread

Hummus

The Culture and Politics of Food in Italy:

I will be offering this study abroad program in Spring Quarter, 2023 and 2024. If you are interested in learning more, take a look at the informational website and also feel free to let me know so I can give you more information. If there is enough interest in the class, I will set up an info session later this quarter. Here is a link for the Zoom Recording of the Info Session for Spring 2023, but the program in 2024 will be very similar.

COVID Policy Update:

This course will be taught in-person, unless university policies change due to the ongoing challenges of COVID.

Masks are recommended by UW policy guidelines, especially for the first two weeks of class as students return from holiday travel with the heightened exposure that entails. Students are encouraged to stay home if they are feeling symptomatic. Class lectures will be recorded on Panopto for students who cannot attend class due to illness.

Trigger Warning:

This class will include material that critiques moral judgments about body size. The objective of the course is to redirect our gaze away from individual responsibility and toward the toxic food environment of industrial food as a causal factor in the obesity epidemic. However, if you have struggles with eating disorders now or in the past, you might want to discuss your plan to take this course with your health care support team to make sure that this will not hinder your progress towards well-being. 

Class Time and Place: T, Th, 2:30-4:20 GWN 201

Instructor: Professor Ann Anagnost (anagnost@uw.edu)

Instructor Office Hours: T, Th (by appt after lectures or other times when mutually convenient on zoom)

Teaching Assistants: Rachael Tamngin (rlt9@uw.edu)

TA Office Hours: T (4:30, meet after class and can relocate; or by appointment)

Course Themes

This course investigates current debates within the United States about what dietary guidelines are optimal for maintaining human health and how conceptions of individual responsibility and political life are framing these debates.

First, we will look at how science is used to investigate the relationship between diet and the incidence of chronic disease in the United States alongside the industrialization of our food system. We rely on science to inform us about the pros and cons of different dietary approaches, but science itself is a messy process, in which differing paradigms compete within the context of contending social, economic, and political forces. Therefore, we will take a "science and society" approach to the study of competing dietary models and develop an understanding of science as a complex social process.

Second, the course will explore the emergence of a new kind of health consumer who seeks to manage their exposure to disease risk factors through diet. The use of new technologies, such as blogs and other social media, will be explored as a means of disseminating dietary advice through the creation of online communities These online communities put scientists, physicians, health professionals, and self-educating health consumers into dialogue with each other in ways that may be very new. In the search for wellness, health consumers are engaging in a form of science with themselves as singular experimental subjects. This creates an environment in which new actors, such as social media influencers in the domain of diet and lifestyle, parlay their success into a form of enterprise. We will be looking at how this form of "anecdotal" evidence is being weighed in relation to the more traditional forms of scientific research in discussions among members of these Internet communities.

Third, we will explore how social movements offer alternatives to the industrialized food system through farm-to-table sourcing, reclaiming home cooking, self-provisioning, school food reform, and efforts to build local and regional food systems. In particular, we will be looking at the issue of school food as an arena of social activism around food change to improve childhood nutrition.

Fourth, we will explore contemporary food ideologies in the search for personal wellness, environmental sustainability, and social justice. How do people define their moral and ethical selves through food? What attracts them to a specific food philosophy? How does this affect their relations with others? How do they use the evidence of their bodies to weigh the pros and cons of different nutritional ideologies? What are the possible dangers of "obsessing about food too much?" How are we as individuals expected to take responsibility for our health and how can we redirect our gaze to explore the "commercial determinants of health."

Course Format and Requirements

The format of the class is lecture and discussion. You will be expected to come to class having completed the reading for that day and be prepared to participate in discussion.

Accessing Class Materials

The Class Schedule can be found here. It is designed to make all of the assigned readings and films available to you one-click away. The shorter readings are linked as pdfs or hyperlinks to external resources. The reading assignment for the book listed below is linked to the UW Library Portal as an ebook.

• Janet Poppendieck, Free for All: Fixing School Food in America. (Available as an ebook through the UW Library.)

I will be adding links for Powerpoints in pdf form in late morning in time for students to download if they wish to use them as a platform for note taking.

Writing Assignments

There are two essay assignments written in response to a prompt provided by the instructor. The essay topics are constructed to encourage engagement with the course material while also incorporating a personal dimension. It is a hybrid form that requires citation of the readings as a form of scholarly writing but combined with personal narrative (therefore the first person pronoun is allowed). The first paper will be an analysis of an online social media platform that is focused on food, diet, and nutrition. The second essay is to narrate an ethical meal that requires "hands on" activity on your part (i.e., the preparation of a meal from scratch), so you may wish to familiarize yourself with the assignment early in the quarter to keep it in mind as you find opportunities to engage in meal preparation for yourself or others. If access to a kitchen is a problem, please let me know as soon as possible so that I might help you find a cooking buddy or other access to a kitchen facility on campus.

• An online research project on the "health blogosphere" (4 pages).
• Narrating an ethical meal (4 pages).

Discussion Groups

There are no sections for this class. The students will be divided into discussion groups of 10 or so students each. The membership of these groups will be constant throughout the quarter in order to encourage a sense of learning community.

Each student is required to write a discussion post that is 2-3 paragraphs long for each of 10 (out of a possible 17)  discussion boards. The post may be in response to the prompt provided by the instructor, or on some other aspect of the reading/film that you would like to comment on.

In either case, it is important for you to include a quotation from the reading or a specific moment of a film that is required viewing to use as a jumping off point for your own commentary in order to get full credit. The discussion post format is intended to document your engagement with the reading/film but also it is a good practice for the kind of engagement I am looking for in the two paper assignments. Each post is worth 3 points and should be approximately 250-300 words in length. 

Once you have submitted your post, you will then be able to read and comment on a post submitted by one of the other students in your group. Each student is responsible for commenting on 10 (out of 17) discussion boards on a post written by another student. The comment needs to be a substantive paragraph in that it cannot simply be a thumbs up but needs to develop a discussion to get full credit. 

All discussion posts and responses for the week will be due by class time (2:30) on the day of the assignment. 

Credit Structure

• 25%     Health Blogosphere Research Project
• 25%     Ethical Meal Project
• 30%     Discussion posts (for 10 out of 17), 3 points each
• 10%     Responses to other student posts (for 10 out of 18), 1 point each
• 10%     Participation
• 100%   Total 

Grades will be calculated as follows: The total number of points will be multiplied by 4 and divided by 100 to convert to the 4.0 scale. If there is a decimal remainder of .5 or higher, it will be rounded up.

Expectations
Success in this course will require keeping up with the reading and discussion posts.  Written work will be evaluated on the basis of demonstrating engagement with the course materials, which includes citing the readings and relevant quotes to develop your argument. 

Class email list: I will use the email list to communicate with you about changes in assignments, scheduling, and other general classroom issues.   

Plagiarism Policy
Students are expected to do their own work. Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will result in zero credit for the assignment and possible further consequences in accordance with university policy and regulations. Information obtained from Internet sources must be acknowledged by citing the url (web address) and date of access, even if individual authors are not indicated.

For further information on how plagiarism is defined by the university and university policies regarding plagiarism, see the following website: http://www.washington.edu/uaa/gateway/advising/help/academichonesty.php (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.