Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/New York University/Food and Identity in the Middle East (2013 Q1)/Course description
This course will provide an introduction to the study of the Middle East and its Jewish communities through an examination of culinary history and foodways. Particular attention will be paid to food as a marker of class, ethnic, and religious identity. After a brief theoretical introduction to the study of ethnicity and nationalism, we will discuss a variety of thematic and regional issues, including the intersections of food, class, colonialism, memory and globalization. Finally, during the later part of the semester we will examine the contest over ownership of regional dishes, such as hummus and falafel, in the context of the Arab-Israel and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts. We will then conclude with discussions of two recent trends, globalization and culinary copyrighting, via a campaign initiated by the Association of Lebanese Industrialists to prevent Israel from marketing Middle Eastern foods as Israeli internationally.