Critical Social Inquiry 0299 - Following the Chinese Food

Chinese food is more American than apple pie, writes Jennifer Lee in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, noting that there are more Chinese restaurants than McDonald's in the U.S. In this course, we take Chinese food as a ubiquitous American foodway that is at once both "familiar" and "foreign" and thus offers a potent entry point into the study of the cultural politics of food, identity, and belonging in the U.S. Students will carry out an ethnographic research project that begins with questions about Chinese food as it intersects with their own lives. Students will "follow the Chinese food" wherever their questions take them-from homes to restaurants to markets to farms-and will be guided through the process of conducting fieldwork and interviews, grappling with the ethics of participatory research, writing fieldnotes and other forms of ethnographic documentation, and engaging in the critical reflexive act of interpretation and writing. As part of the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment, students in this course will receive a small research stipend to use during the semester

Independent Work Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives Students are expected to spend at least six to eight hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time.