The Politics of Food: Food Case Studies

Day 15:

The Politics of Hummus and Falafel.

Assigned Readings:

Hirsch, Dafna. “‘Hummus Is Best When It Is Fresh and Made by Arabs’: The Gourmetization of Hummus in Israel and the Return of the Repressed Arab.” American Ethnologist (Malden, USA) 38, no. 4 (November 2011): 617–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01326.x.

Reem Kassis, “Hummus, Tahini, and Other Tastes of Home in Jerusalem’s Old City,” The New York Times.

Chef Fadi Kattan, "Freekeh, Freekeh, Freekeh!" November 2020.

Reading prompt: What did you learn about the history of freekeh, and why is its history relevant to the subject of appropriation, per Kattan?;

Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley, “Fishing in Gaza: the catch-22 of the sea.” Falastin. 196-199.

Watch:

Episode 6 of Fadi Kattan’s Teta’s Kitchen: Sumakiyeh in Gaza.

Day 16:

Olives, Zaa’tar & Salt Houses

Assigned Readings:

a) Anne Meneley, “The Companion to Every Bite: Palestinian Olive Oil in the Levant,” Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean edited by Anny Gaul, Graham Auman Pitts and Vicki Valosik. 115-132. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7560/324578.

b) Salt Houses (chapters “Salma,” “Mustafa,” and “Alia.”)

Reading prompts:

What roles do food and land play in these chapters of Salt Houses? How is the narration conveying the family's traumatic experience in 1948 Nakba and their relation to Jaffa? What do we learn about Mustafa's character, from the beginning to the end of the chapter? How does his encounter with Imam Bakri’s story, saturated with the violation and devastation of an entire family, empower the framing of Mustafa’s transformation? “Alia”’s chapter is dated December 1967, after the lost in the 6-day war. Yet, the narration is not chronological. Alia's reflections on her husband, Atef, her brother, Ali, and her visit to Kuwait, offer a glimpse into important events. What does the reader learn about Atef before and after the war, the loss of Mustafa, and the way Palestinians and non-Palestinians talked about the defeat in 1967?

- Israel reformulating ban on harvesting wild herbs used in traditional Palestinian cuisine

- Ronit Vered, “How Za’atar became a victim of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” Haaretz.