UF Center for Latin American Studies
Spring 2025 | Online, asynchronous
Course description
Food and Gastronomy in Latin America provides a grand tour of the region’s fundamental and global contributions to agriculture, foodways and gastronomy. The course begins with the emergence of agriculture in Mesoamerica, Highland South America and Lowland South America and explores how this development led to political complexification and the emergence of states and civilizations in Latin America. Case studies on important plant species domesticated in Latin America are presented. Foodways of particular socio-linguistic groups and regions are examined in detail, with major case studies from Mexico and Peru that draw on themes of indigeneity, colonialism, identity and foodways, cultural fusion and appropriation and political ecology. The course also looks at the rise of high-end gastronomy in Latin America and global attention being paid to Latin American chefs who draw from various cultural and heritage elements in Latin America in pursuit of gastronomy.
John Richard Stepp
Center for Latin American Studies
Department of Anthropology
1112 Turlington Hall
P.O. Box 117305
Gainesville, FL 32611-7305
E-mail: stepp@ufl.edu
Tel: 352-392-0299
Ecological anthropology, ethnobotany, medical anthropology, visual anthropology
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Ecuador, Peru, Caribbean
