Instructor: Junzi Huang
Thursday | 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM | In-Person
Spring 2026
In this seminar, we will adopt an interdisciplinary perspective to explore the globally diverse, weird, and queer politics of food. We will critically engage with practices/theories/texts/films/anime/documentaries/vlogs about food as a local and global interplay of identity and culture, culinary imagination, reproductive labor, ethics of health and care, racism, Orientalism, ecocultural sustainability, and other related topics. How do the pains and pleasures of “eating” – including livestream eating, food ASMR, bulimia and anorexia, and eating alone – become entangled with broader social phenomena such as cultural change, structural traumas, and creative resistance? Can food be colonized and decolonized? Why is the trending of spicy hotpot a social event? What counts as “the edible”? Who defines eating ‘too much’ or ‘too little’? How is eating different than tasting, swallowing, and digesting? From this course, students will learn to use ‘food’ and ‘eating’ as creative tools for exploring the depths and globality of everyday life and to broaden their understandings of difference, social relations, and the humanities.