In this course, we will explore how foodways in global China have been transformed and reproduced continuously through interactions among Chinese and Chinese diaspora communities across time, space, and culture. We will examine the key theoretical frameworks, concepts, and basic research methods, including history, ethnography, narrative, and material culture.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate students will write a longer final research paper for the course.
Athena Title
Global Chinese Foodways
Undergraduate Prerequisite
Experience engaging critically with cultural or other materials and experience developing and expressing ideas in written, oral, and other forms.
Graduate Prerequisite
Experience engaging critically with cultural or other materials and experience developing and expressing ideas in written, oral, and other forms.
Semester Course Offered
Offered summer semester every even-numbered year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will be familiar with key scholars and their works in the studies of Chinese foodways and understand the role of foodways in global China.
Students will discuss the dynamics, complexity, and fluidity of global Chinese foodways from interdisciplinary, transnational, and intersectional perspectives.
Students will understand the basic research methods to study global Chinese foodways, and apply some to your own research.
Students will describe and discuss intelligently those materials studied in class and in field and how they relate to broader discourse in global China such as health, environment, migration, identity, tradition, power, globalization, modernity, and community.
Students will develop critical and creative thinking through reading, writing, discussion, fieldwork, and presentation.
Students will discuss your own position in relation to perspective(s) from global China.
Topical Outline
DuBois, Thomas David. 2024. China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History. Reaktion Books.
Fu, Jia-Chen, Michelle T. King, and Jakob A. Klein, eds. 2025. Modern Chinese Foodways. MIT Press.
Fuchsia Dunlop. 2023. Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food. Particular Books.
Gilman, Lisa, and John Fenn. 2019. Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
King, Michelle T. 2025. Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food. W. W. Norton & Company.
Miller, Jeff, and Jonathan Deutsch. 2009. Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods. Berg.
You, Ziying. 2025. Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women: Racisms, Feminisms, and Foodways. Indiana University Press. https://iupress.org/9780253073334/impacts-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-chinese-and-chinese-american-women/
Documentary
A Bite of China (Season 1 and 2)
Experiential Learning Outcomes
Global (Domestic and international)
Interact with a culture and/or region distinct from their own and engage in academic inquiry and application afforded by the specific off-campus setting
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Social Awareness & Responsibility
The capacity to understand the interdependence of people, communities, and self in a global society.
