CLCS 284 - Subnature and Culinary Culture

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as FREN 284) “Subnature,” a word coined by historian and theorist David Gissen, defines aspects of nature that the architectural discipline has traditionally shunned, such as dankness, darkness, mud, weeds, smoke, puddles, dust, debris, crowds, and pigeons. Subnature encapsulates the “problems” architects have attempted to solve, circumvent and avoid, or have “othered” in preference for such opposing qualities as light, airiness, cleanliness, and flow. Architectural efforts have occasional sought to transform and reappropriate subnatures as positive aesthetic phenomena, designing modernized mud houses, for example, or reclaiming vacant lots and weeded expanses as objects of beauty.

This College course expands the architectural notion of subnature, applying that theoretical construct to categories of marginalized foods and cuisines. Why, for example, are foods eaten as delicacies in some societies repugnant to others, and what are the ethical, aesthetic, and health implications of marginalized foods throughout history, across regions, in different cultures? Can such foods be reframed and reapproriated? We examine such “subnatural” foods as filter feeders, stinky cheeses, foraged and gleaned food, offal, chitterlings and other innards, microbes, molds, and mushrooms, taboo textures, and foods marked by the terroir. Applying a transdisciplinary methodology, we submit food to subnature paradigms of theory and practice used not only in architecture, but also in womens’ studies, cultural anthropology, French and Italian studies, biology, chemistry, philosophy, and economics. Thomas Parker.

Course readings are provided via Moodle, but there is a $50/student fee used for subnatural food samples, and a field trip. This fee will be debited at the time of course registration.

All readings and discussions in English.

Two 75-minute periods.