Course Spotlight: Sociology of Taste

Are you still looking to complete your Spring 2021 schedule?  Connor Fitzmaurice  will be teaching Sociology of Taste (MET ML 716 A1) on Thursday evenings.

Illustration by Wren McDonald in GQ: “The Restaurant List That Ate the Food World” by Brett Martin

Taste has an undeniable personal immediacy: producing visceral feelings ranging from delight to disgust. As a result, in our everyday lives we tend to think about taste as purely a matter of individual preference. However, for sociologists, our tastes are not only socially meaningful, they are also socially determined, organized, and constructed. This course will introduce students to the variety of questions sociologists have asked about taste. What is a need? Where do preferences come from? What social functions might our tastes serve? Major theoretical perspectives for answering these questions will be considered, examining the influence of societal institutions, status seeking behaviors, internalized dispositions, and systems of meaning on not only what we enjoy–but what we find most revolting.

If this course sounds interesting to you, please find registration information below.

MET ML 716 A1, Sociology of Taste, will meet on Thursday evenings from 6 to 8:45 PM, beginning on January 28th. Registration information can be found here.

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