Food in Modern East Central Europe: A Cu

Food is life – says a banal truism. It is the foundation of biological existence, and producing, creating and savoring food pervades life from the cradle to the last breath. It is everywhere from the campfire to picture galleries and philosophy books. It is material and symbolic, emotional and calculated. It is a glue and a dividing line between people.

Food is history. Both as a prominent or an almost invisible thread running through life, food is more than itself, a lens on how society changed through history. This course uses food as a social phenomenon to highlight differences and commonalities of the region called East Central Europe without and within. It reflects upon the numerous faces of food, how its changes, its use, creation, consumption, and study mirrors broader historical developments and how it serves as focus of attachments known from contemporary politics: national, local, regional. Following food in East Central European history offers not only an analysis of food and its function within society, but how food has changed with society too.

Throughout the course we shall explore the different – material, cultural, political, class – meanings of food, while introducing perspectives from different academic disciplines like social and political history, sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology. We start from the material, and through the concepts of food culture and food ways we shall connect the symbolic and practical aspects of food. After exploring how technology and science changed food and how it is related to modernity, we shall delve into the cultural and political: how does food reflect and represent various differences, how it is used to symbolize the immaterial. Finally, as East Central European food history is anything but peculiar, we will use food to think about the possible meanings of this geographic concept.