New Course Proposal: El Arte de la Cozina: Comida, Cultura, e Identidad en la España Medieval

Golden Haggadah, c. 1320, folio 14v

Golden Haggadah, c. 1320, folio 14v

This course dives into the culture of medieval Spain through a uniquely delicious lens: food. This class is aimed at third-year and fourth-year advanced intermediate to advanced Spanish students and/or graduate students with Spanish experience. The class will develop students’ linguistic and cultural awareness of medieval Spain through the exploration of written texts, images, manuscripts, and, of course, the exploration and consumption of its food. The main objective of this class is to introduce students to the complex narratives of identity and culture revealed by the culinary repertoires of medieval and early modern Spain. Additionally, this course seeks to expand advanced Spanish students’ linguistic ability through the analysis of medieval Spanish language texts as well as the exploration of the Spanish culinary historical discourse. Through the multimodal engagement with a wide variety of texts – literary, visual, audial, and culinary – this course proposes to engage students in complex discourses of medieval Spanish culture, identity, and food in the target language and to inspire critical reflection into students’ own culinary markers of identity.