Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Anthropology

Project Advisor 1

Jeff Jurgens

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This project is about the Cooking and Eating Life of Bard students. I examined the Bard Food infrastructure, how students compose and cook "good food", and also how they share food impromptu in the common area and through dinner parties. I used Brain Larkin’s theory of infrastructure applies to the Bard Dining system, how Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ description of the bread on Palestine streets in Gifted resembles the food donated and taken in the common area by dorm residents, the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour used to analyze the relationship between people, food, and their cookwares in the kitchen, how Bard students make “good food” in the common area that follows meal structures of a decent meal proposed by Sidney Mintz and Mary Douglas, how the concept of “alimentary dignity” proposed by Hanna Garth applies to Bard students’ own cooking, how Bard students “stayed connected with their homes” through the food they cook by “maintained local systems” and “forged links with an authentic past” in Real Belizean Food as Richard Wilk writes, what Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the “taste of necessity” and “taste of luxury” means and how that meaning evolves for Bard students who cook for themselves, and finally, gift giving through food as a means to sustain social relations as Marcel Mauss studied in The Gift. Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

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