Provide students a soul-nourishing meal: a deep knowledge of the history of Southern foodways from the first mixtures of Indigenous, African, and European modes of growing, cooking, and eating in the 16th century to the deliciously fragmenting iterations of Southern food (Black, Latinx, Vietnamese, Jewish, vegan, and more) in the 21st century. Examination of the intersections of food with economics, labor, gender, religion, and family life, as well as the worldwide influence of the cuisine of our region. Joyful eating will be mandatory.
Athena Title
History of Southern Food
Pre or Corequisite
Any HIST or ADSC or AESC or ECOL or ECON or FACS or NAMS or AFAM or AFST or SOWK or POLS course
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, students will be able to arrive at conclusions about the history of Southern food by gathering and weighing evidence, logical argument, and listening to counter argument.
By the end of this course, students will be able to write stylistically appropriate papers and essays. Students will be able to analyze ideas and evidence, organize their thoughts, and revise and edit their finished essays.
By the end of this course, students will be able to identify how the history of Southern food has shaped social, cultural, and ethnic/racial identities, encouraging them to understand diverse worldviews and experiences.
By the end of this course, students will be able to apply appropriate methodological approaches to their analysis of primary sources and to organize their evidence to show historical continuities and discontinuities.
Topical Outline
1. Indigenous foodways on the East Coast of North America, 15th century
2. Spanish/Aztec interactions; Columbian Exchange; first "Southern food" is MesoAmerican
3. English plans upon colonization of Jamestown; multiple "starving times" require the adoption of Native ways of farming, cooking, and eating
4. Developing food cultures in the Colonial Lowcountry; Black majority spaces, African influence over Carolina cuisine, combined with English taste and Atlantic rice economy; first visit to New Orleans
5. Westward movement into Appalachia; foraging cultures of the mountain South (ginseng, muscadine, mushrooms, mulberries) before, during, and after Civil War
6. Civil War as crisis and reinvention of foodways rooted in slavery and the plantation; return to Union-occupied New Orleans
7. Post-War spread of cotton cultivation to Upcountry; changes to local food cultures with increasing market dependence; spread of railroads; new farming techniques
8. World War I; boll weevil; the collapse of southeastern cotton farming and the Great Migration; overlapping foodways of white, but especially Black rural folk spread northward and to the cities with Great Migration; Southern food begins to become American food
9. An examination of Texas; borderlands politics, labor migrations, and "southwestern cuisine"; bracero program and WWII
10. Post-WWII decline of small farmers and growing urban landscape of the South; second return to New Orleans to examine the rise of a "Southern restaurant culture," the formulation of "Creole cuisine," and the role of Black chefs in that development; relationship between Civil Rights movement, Black Power movement, and ideas of "Soul food," but also Black economic empowerment and return to the land
11. Post-1965 changes in immigration; large influxes of East Asian, Cuban, and South Asian populations to southern cities from Miami to Atlanta to Charlotte; examination of Cold War impacts on the food cultures of new Southerners' countries of origin, as well as the ways they transformed the food scenes of these Southern cities
12. The rise of "Southern food" to the apex of national food culture in the 1980s and 1990s through popular culture, celebrity chefs, and new notions of traditionalism - what gets left out of the story?
13. Reflections on where "Southern food" stands in a divided South in 2021
