Gastrodiplomacy: Cooking Up A Tasty Lesson On War And Peace
It's often said that the closest interaction many Americans have with other countries' cultures is through food. That kind of culinary diplomacy is particularly common in Washington, D.C., where immigrants from all over the world have cooked up a diverse food scene.
Now one scholar-in-residence at American University is using the city's food culture to teach her students about global affairs via a course on "gastrodiplomacy" — using food as a tool to foster cultural understanding among countries.
While the concept of gastrodiplomacy has been gaining traction among governments in recent years (former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a "chef ambassador" corps a couple of years ago), the class is the first of its kind at a school of international relations, says Johanna Mendelson Forman, a policy expert on international conflict who teaches the new course.
"What's unique is that students themselves would never make the connection that food is a part of international relations," she says.
Already halfway through its first run, the course immerses students in the study of war and conflict prior to Sept. 11 — including the Vietnam War, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and Ethiopia's civil war — and how those have led to the sizable diaspora in D.C. Students also get a taste of how food affected those conflicts.
Perhaps the best part of her class? The field trips to local ethnic restaurants, where students get to enjoy a traditional meal and hear the owners speak about the history of their culture. During a recent trip to Das Ethiopian Cuisine in Georgetown, students learned about the influences Italians had on Ethiopian cuisine when they colonized the country in the 1930s.
"The idea is for students to hear from the cooks, from the owners of these places, [about] how they see their cuisine as a communication tool in their own communities," says Mendelson Forman.
While gastrodiplomacy is a relatively new field in the realm of public diplomacy, the idea itself can be traced back to the ancient Romans, who often made peace with their enemies over a good meal.
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