EATING AWAY AT OURSELVES: THE PRINCETON CHARTER CLUB, COMMENSALITY, AND PROJECTS OF SELFHOOD

Abstract

Since the inception of eating clubs at Princeton University, eating clubs have served as social loci where students gather to have meals, fellowship, and celebrate. Drawing from seven weeks of virtual interviews and in-person observations with members of the Princeton Charter Club, one of twelve eating clubs at Princeton, this ethnography renders how food as a material culture acts on and is acted on by persons in the formation of selves. This thesis elucidates the role of the physical space of the Princeton Charter Club in the members’ pursuit of selfhood and works to show how this space’s effect on students morphs in and through broader spaces and time. Focusing on my interlocutors’ language and performances with and around food, it investigates the making of selves within Charter. This thesis emanates figures of youth, identity, nostalgia, technology, and the academy, highlighting the role of each in the making and presentation of culture/s.