(c) Photos: Lindsay Hexter, Italian Student

Ciao!

Welcome to ITALIAN 190. Please relax, be ready to learn, eat and share with you family and friends what you have learned!  Buon Appettito!!!

About:

In this course, we will employ a multidisciplinary approach to analyze the impact of food production and consumption practices in the individual and the global ecosystem.  We will begin our exploration of the subject matter with a comparative analysis of two texts: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Regimen Sanitatis, a prescriptive guideline to healthy living written by the renaissance master in 1515, and the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Pyramid, a dietary guideline that has gone through several iterations since it was introduced to the American people for the first time in 1980.  We will survey a sample of Italian films and literary works that illustrate the impact that Italian culinary arts excerpts in the individual and how the nexus between food and national identity gave rise to the “Slow Food Movement” a grass roots movement founded in 1989 to promote the preservation of local and organic food traditions to counteract the proliferation of low-quality, transnational fast food chains in Europe. Students will be engaged both in group, and individual projects, assignments and excursions. The course includes a community-engaged learning module designed to expose students to the Emory University’s sustainability network of Farmer’s Markets, local vendors and vegetable gardens. A Laboratory component consisting of two cooking classes will provide students with an opportunity to integrate and practice sustainable and healthy eating practices in their everyday life and enable them to enjoy the pleasures of great food while developing an ecological consciousness.