This module is about culinary cultures of Berlin i.e. food, taste, the global network of ingredients and accompanying migration stories.
Food is always on the move. The recipes evolve, ingredients change, tastes travel. People carry their food cultures wherever they go, fuse them with other ingredients and invent new tastes. One might call it a form of art. Even though we often identify food with some geographical markers (Indian, Turkish, French, Chinese food), the geographical trajectories of taste are much more complicated than that - and history is no different.
What we will do in this module is to delve into the diversity of food cultures and try to unravel different faces of Berlin around taste. From solidarity kitchens to chain restaurants, from no-animal diets to home-made food stalls, we will try to understand how food brings people together - or divides them.
To this purpose, there will be excursions to places where foods and cultures intermingle, where political statement are made through food (like in Weltläden) or where good taste reinforce exploitation and misery. Our hub will be Berlin, but we'll try to follow footprints that go well beyond the city and travel the globe.
You will have to carry out interviews, observe, take field notes, and collect archival material (photos, videos, sounds...) when and if allowed. Apart from excursions, you are expected to explore other secondary materials (might be movies, novels, comic books, recipes that somehow bring together the city and its tastes... )
Attendance to class is mandatory.