Rouse, Carolyn and Janet Hoskins. 2004. “Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam: Explorations at the Intersection of Consumption and Resistance.” Cultural Anthropology 19 (2): 226-49.
https://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/08867356/v19i0002/226_psfasitiocar.
Sutton, David E. 2010. “Food and the Senses,” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 39: 209-23. (on Blackboard)
Wilk, Richard R. 1999. “ ‘Real Belizean Food’: Building Local Identity in the Transnational Caribbean.” American Anthropologist 101 (2): 244-255. doi:10.2307/683199.
https://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/00027294/v101i0002/244_bfbliittc
To consider, from your syllabus:
Avieli, Nir. 2011. “Eating Lunch and Recreating the Universe: Food and Cosmology in Hoi An, Vietnam,” IN Kathleen M. Adams and Kathleen A. Gillogly (eds), Everyday Life in Southeast Asia, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 218-29.
Bestor, Theodore C. 2011. “Cuisine and Identity in Contemporary Japan,” in Victoria Lyon Bestor and Theodore C. Bestor with Akiko Yamagata (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society, NY: Routledge, pp.
273-85.
Hendry, Joy. 2008. Sharing Our Worlds: An Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology. 2nd edition. NY: New York University Press. [E.g., have a look in her index under “food” to find ideas relevant to your paper.]
Mintz, Sidney. “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.” Ethnology, 47(2/3): 129-135.
Advice:
A term paper is a composition that stakes a unique argument fortified by textual evidence. It is not a summary of what you’ve read: rewording others’ work does not a term paper make. In other words, after reflecting on readings and lectures, the student makes an original argument about a topic. S/he provides a bit of background to the topic and then proceeds to explain her position by quoting and citing sources that give substance to her argument.
A thesis should not be obvious. “Canadians think about gender with food.” True, but so do people anywhere in the world: it’s a bit too obvious. “Muslims in India use food to maintain group identity.” Again—we know this already, and we might want to try to avoid making generalizations about over 100 million Muslims living in India.
Usually, a thesis works best when it is narrowly focused. Broad claims about humans or about a culture often flop. Rather than trying to prove that all people of a given culture believe something, try to focus on a highly specific topic and show how some people do something. Our goal is not to list the “truths” about a culture, but to understand culture as it is used; and it is often used quite differently, even by people living in the same village. I suggest you base your paper in one place, such as Hong Kong or Manila, and then on a small group of people there—perhaps even about one food, such as SPAM, sushi, or roti.
So: imagine a sharply focused topic, such as a paper about how Trinidadian-Canadians use roti to think about kinship, or how SPAM is sometimes used as a food with which to produce gender in the Philippines. In turn, what is your thesis about this topic? What would you like to argue? And what academic sources can you quote from to bolster your case?