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28/08/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 29/08/2024 14:20

Exploring Boston’s Cultural and Culinary Diversity

Exploring Boston's Cultural and Culinary Diversity

CAS food anthropology course takes students to Chinatown and the North End to learn how politics influences what we eat

Malcolm Chimieze (CAS'25) (left) and Andrew King (CAS'25) poring over the meat section of the Jia Ho Supermarket in Chinatown during a field trip. Students in the Food in Place(s) class were tasked with paying attention to not only the cultural and economic influences they discussed in class, but their own sensory experiences.

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Exploring Boston's Cultural and Culinary Diversity

CAS food anthropology course takes students to Chinatown and the North End to learn how politics influences what we eat

August 28, 2024
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Malcolm Chimieze had never seen a bucket of eels before.

"Check that out," he says to Andrew King, who's busy examining shelves of dried seaweed across the room.

The two peer into a plastic recycling bin outfitted with a trash bag and filled with water. Inside are 15 freshwater eels-shiny, black, and as thick as a garden hose. Chimieze (CAS'25) and King (CAS'25) each pull out papers and pens and begin taking notes. Their attention causes Lucy Schofield (CAS'25) to put down a bottle of melon soda and join them.

The students are at the Jia Ho Supermarket in Chinatown, a brightly lit basement-level shop carrying everything from freshly caught seafood to dried ginseng root. They're on a field trip for their Summer II anthropology class, Food in Place(s): Identity, Location, and the Cultures of Taste. Like all good anthropologists, they're doing fieldwork to better understand how immigrant communities have adapted, evolved, and persisted over time.

On this scorching July day, the class is tasked with spending an hour and a half exploring and taking notes on the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds they encounter in one of Boston's most densely populated neighborhoods, home to a succession of Irish, Jewish, Italian, and Syrian immigrants before the first Chinese families arrived in the 1870s.

"I'm always interested in learning about different cultures and how groups of people live, so the field trips were intriguing to me," Chimieze says. "But I can't lie, food was a big factor in why I chose to take this class."

Schofield says she'd taken a couple of anthropology classes, "and when I saw that this one was being offered and fit into my schedule, I thought it would be pretty cool. I also saw that we'd be taking field trips, and I hadn't had a class yet that did that."

Computer science major Lucy Schofield (CAS'25) registered for Food in Place(s) because she enjoyed the HUB anthropology courses she'd previously taken and was excited by the class' multiple field trips.

Sightseeing and tasty food may be two strong endorsements for the class, but they also serve as a vital teaching tool, says course instructor Johnathan Norris (GRS'26,'26), a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology. He inherited the class from Merry "Corky" White, a College of Arts & Sciences professor emerita of anthropology, who developed the course nearly a decade ago and unofficially handed him the reins when she retired in June. According to Norris, who had previously been a teaching fellow for the class, it was White's idea to structure the field trips like a freewheeling exploration rather than a formal walking tour, to "give students a sense of what an anthropologist does-literally just wandering and seeing what you find.

"I think by going to those places, I'm able to allow the students to apply a different lens that might bring together several themes that we're talking about in class, and allow them to concretize them in an actual place," he adds. "These are not just grand theories-we talk about capitalism, food tourism, and racism, and then we go to the [sites] and see the effects of it."

What can food teach us about capitalism and racism? This is where the classwork comes in, Norris says. As a sociocultural anthropology student, he focuses primarily on how societal forces-such as economy, religion, migration, and prejudice-affect the choices and behaviors of a given population. Such structures, he says, are the reasons why food culture in Chinatown differs significantly from food culture in the North End, which students visited later in the course. For instance: while both Chinese cuisine and traditional Italian cuisine use eel in recipes, it's unlikely you'll see them slithering onto a restaurant menu in Boston's Italian enclave.

"When students went to the North End, I wanted them to focus on food tourism and what that does to drive food choices," Norris explains. "With Italian food in America, there has been this consolidation-not so much in Chinese food, where if you want Sichuan food or Cantonese food, you can find it. Italian food in America, and in the North End especially, has been winnowed down to just red sauce and tomatoes."

When Chimieze, King, and Schofield visited Chinatown and came across foods they'd never seen before, it was because of a different cultural pattern. For decades, denizens of Chinatown lived in relative isolation, and without the resources to break into Boston's main food economy, they primarily cooked for one another.

"I have my personal things that I want students to walk away with, and the number one thing is realizing the political stakes behind our food," Norris says. "To understand Chinatowns across the United States, you have to go back to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the uber-racialization of Chinese individuals that forced them into enclaves and created community solidarity."

In addition to the field trips, Food in Place(s) is a writing-intensive course and has an extensive reading list. Students are required to hand in weekly response papers. Class readings explore how culture and demography exert their influence on food in a given place; syllabus texts cover everything from cookbooks in India to the racialized impact of farm-to-table fare in Kansas City, Mo., from Jewish people's connection to Chinese food to Dumpster divers in Vancouver and female beermakers in medieval Europe. At the end of the course, students deliver their own anthropological texts in the form of a 10- to 12-page paper on a topic related to food and a certain cultural force (religion, class, nationality, gender, sexuality, and race are common choices) that includes ethnographic data, scholarly sources, and anthropological theory.

"These stories and their specific contexts speak to a larger idea," Norris says. "I think that's the beauty of anthropology in general-and with food, you're able to really get to the nitty-gritty of what people are doing."

Meanwhile at Mei Sum Bakery, around the corner from the Jia Ho Supermarket, Chimieze, King, and Schofield sit at plastic tables munching on egg custard buns while outside, delivery trucks blink their hazard lights and restaurant workers load up with crates of fresh eggplant, cabbage, and long beans.

"There's something really unique about being in an enclave," King says. "It's cool to experience a different part of the world so close to home."

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  • Sophie Yarin

    Associate Editor, BU Today; Managing Editor Bostonia

    Sophie Yarin is a BU Today associate editor and Bostonia managing editor. She graduated from Emerson College's journalism program and has experience in digital and print publications as a hybrid writer/editor. A lifelong fan of local art and music, she's constantly on the hunt for stories that shine light on Boston's unique creative communities. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her partner and their cats, Ringo and Xerxes, but she's usually out getting iced coffee. Profile

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    Jackie Ricciardi is a staff photojournalist at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. She has worked as a staff photographer at newspapers that include the Augusta Chronicle in Augusta, Ga., and at Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, N.H., where she was twice named New Hampshire Press Photographer of the Year. Profile

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