Consuming the Other

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Research Cluster Academic Year
2016
Research Cluster Project Director(s)

Sujey Vega, Assistant Professor, School of Social Transformation
Angelica Afanador-Pujol, Assistant Professor, School of Art
Nilanjana Bhattacharjya, Honors Faculty Fellow, Barrett Honors College

Description

This transdisciplinary and collaborative research cluster will explore how people engage with representations of otherness through the act of consumption. Participants will study the intersection of art and food, public festivals and race, class and ethnicity, and national identity and immigration. Building on the strengths of its participants, we will analyze ways of consumption that range from the politics that surround street vendors in Los Angeles, California; the representation of food and cannibalism in sixteenth century Mexican manuscripts; the consumption of Mexican and Chicano culture by Mormons in Mesa, AZ; and the consumption of cultural performances at international festivals in London.