Overview

Kitchen and food, as fundamental elements of human existence, are also among the symbols and practices that reflect the layered distinctions and commonalities of social relations based on class, region, culture, and gender. For a researcher, approaching the kitchen and food through a social science perspective enables the production of insightful studies on a wide range of topics related to migration, space, gender, culture, and methodology.
Through this course, we will examine works produced in various fields of the social sciences that focus on kitchen and food. We will explore how to interpret the matrix of ritual values and rhythms that shape the patterns of life within the contexts of migration, gender, race, national, and countercultures.
The course aims to open a window into studying culture, language, and gender as crystallized in food and recipes within both Turkish-language literature and the global body of work—starting from Turkish-speaking regions and the diaspora—by treating the kitchen as a spatial relationship.