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When thinking of Italy, food is one of the first things that come to mind. But what is beyond a lavishly decked table? What are the questions that can be explored through food and its practices in Italy, but also in Italian communities around the world? This First-Year Seminar explores the relationship between food and the formation of identity through the lenses of migration, gender, race, ideology, nationalism, and diaspora. The seminar will analyze literature on food studies at the crossroads with anthropological, sociopolitical questions. We’ll discuss the relationship with memory, as well as with cultural reproduction in immigrant communities and the tension with a critical discourse around political propaganda on the notion of authenticity in contemporary Italy. Other topics include the formation of taste in conjunction with sociopolitical modes of exclusion and social class, through history, but also exemplified in films. For instance, the class will be presented with movies and readings on Roman-Jewish culinary traditions, its diasporic experience, and the contemporary cultural appropriation. The screening of the movie Big Night, on the other hand, will provide an opportunity to approach a reading through a phenomenological apparatus, and analyze the impact of Italian cinema on American and Italian American culture. A guest speaker will be invited to present their scholarship, followed by a discussion.