Course Spotlight- Culture and Cuisine: New England

MET ML 638, Culture and Cuisine: New England will be taught this Spring 2025 on Wednesday from 6:00-8:45 p.m. by Dr. Karen Metheny

Course Description: How are the foodways of New England’s inhabitants, past and present, intertwined with the history and culture of this region? In this course, students will have the opportunity to examine the cultural uses and meanings of foods and foodways in New England using historical, archaeological, oral, and material evidence. We will focus on key cultural, religious and political movements that have affected foodways in the region, as well as the movement of people. The course begins with an examination of Native American food traditions and practices in the pre-contact period. We will also consider how foodways mirrored the clash of cultures during an extended period of contact and settlement by Europeans.

How did the Pilgrim settlers respond to a new environment and to new foods in the New World? How did perceptions of their own Englishness change? Old-fashioned Yankee fare is considered emblematic of traditional New England by many writers, and we will consider why this perception exists and when it developed. But New England foodways have also been greatly influenced by immigrant groups in the 19th and 20th centuries. Students will therefore look closely at the food preferences, traditions, and subsistence practices of the Irish, Italian, and Portuguese immigrant communities in New England. We will also look at two cultural phenomena in 20th-century New England—roadside diners and tea houses—to understand the changes wrought by the introduction of the automobile and the interstate highway system, as well as the larger impact of industrialization and commercialization of foods.

Students will travel to Old Sturbridge Village to prepare and enjoy a 19th-century hearth-cooked meal and tour the museum. Other trips to be determined.

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