Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

Italian Food and Fiction

Instructor(s): Shirley Smith, Foreign Language & Literature

Interdisciplinary study of food in Italian literary texts and in works of art. Students explore the art of Italian cookery and eating in relation to narrative, socio-cultural mores, the environment, and Italian history. Students will examine works from the Renaissance to the 21st Century by writers and artists such as Dante, Boccaccio, Caravaggio, and Italo Calvino. Finally, students will explore the foundation of the Slow Food Movement, which began in Italy in the1990s to counteract the increase in popularity of fast food and the decrease in traditional local foods. Discussion of Slow Food Nation will open discussion of the politics of nutrition in Italy. Finally, students will plan and prepare two collective dinners (one early-modern, the other contemporary) using traditional Italian ingredients.