Talk Bites into Eating Habits of the Sexes

An assistant professor of philosophy from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., will come to Westmont to talk about how cultural myths of female and male eating relate in important ways to how men and women generally react to desire. Christina Van Dyke’s lecture “‘I’ll Have a Salad and Diet Coke’: Eating as a Gendered Act,” will be at Kerrwood Hall in Hieronymus Lounge, Friday, Jan. 12, at 3:30 p.m. The free talk is open to the public.

David Vander Laan, Westmont associate professor of philosophy, says Van Dyke’s lecture will address how the Christian traditions of fasting and feasting present us with a way to reclaim a healthy attitude toward our hunger.

Van Dyke graduated from Calvin College and earned her doctorate at Cornell University. She has been teaching at Calvin since 2001.

Her areas of areas of expertise include medieval philosophy, philosophy of mind and metaphysics, ancient philosophy and feminist philosophy. She is the co-author of a forthcoming book on Thomas Aquinas’s ethics.

The lecture is sponsored by the Westmont philosophy department.