“Food, Magic, Medicine” introduces the age of exploration as an era of encounter and exchange. Rather than focusing on conquest, it asks how Native and African cultures transformed European, American and global history during the early modern era. While imperialism relied on an ideology of supremacy, both in politics and culture, colonists were often dependent on Native and African knowledge, food and expertise. Paying careful attention to the social meaning of specific foods, such as sugar and rice, as well as cultural practices like scientific collecting and healing, this course interrogates the revolutions in taste, knowledge and belief that took place in the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1800.
