The Meaning of Food

Pictured here: a farmer’s boots.

This post will have to be brief, as I am very sick with bronchitis, and am too weak to do much right now besides breathe and try not to cough.

Yesterday I met Robin Somers, who teaches writing up at the University of Santa Cruz. She told me about a course she had just completed called “The Meaning of Food.” I Googled and found the course description:

The Meaning of Food
Food is a heated topic these days: there's a lot to write about. Writing about food lends itself to rich description, compelling personal narratives, careful analysis, and persuasion. In this course we will read and write about food and food writing. We will explore current debates regarding sustainable agriculture and industrial agriculture, "slow" food and genetically modified food, and we will examine the reasons for today's piqued interest in farmers' markets, cooking, chefs as celebrities, and more. While studying both popular and scholarly works, including such disparate giants of food writing as M. F. K. Fisher and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), we will examine how food shapes culture and how we as consumers affect this paradigm. Students will keep journals, conduct an interview, and participate in peer workshops. Writing assignments will include informal writing, reading responses, and a sampling of essay forms (and revisions) targeted at specific audiences, beginning with memoir and culminating in a research paper and an op-ed.  

Robin was talking about Slow Food and its timeline, and said a student of hers thought it predated Alice Waters and other Bay area chefs turning to organic/local/seasonal menus, but in fact Slow Food was founded in 1986, and Waters and clan were mobilizing at the end of the Seventies.

She hopes to be able to repeat the course in 2007: don't you wish every college and university would have such an offering?

Okay, maybe I will have more later, but for now, it's back to bed (where I get to sleep sitting up) for me.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.“  — Meryl Streep

Thanks for visiting.

Comments

[matt]

GET WELL! REST!

(and if I lived closer I'd bring you whatever you needed)

And I wish those classes existed when I was in scholarly mode. Wait, I never was.

[shuna fish lydon]

Young people these days are very lucky. To have all this in their schools, inside computers, at conferences.

I have sent this link to a chef I know who was recently hoping this sort of course could be taught. Thanks for writing about it!

And Oregano oil? have you tried it for the cough?
Best.

[Sharon]

Jeanette Ferrary teaches "From Soup to Nuts," a food writing class through Stanford's Continuing Studies program. I took the class this past winter and found it to be wonderful, from the perspective of learning to be a better writer and exploring the genres food writing as well as just being with a group of people weekly who were passionate about food.

[scott]

Hi Tana. This kind of course would be a wonderful addition to any college writing program; I've gotten to the point where I'm no longer so surprised when people haven't the slightest inkling where their food comes from or how it gets to them, so any open discussion of what it means to eat would be welcome. Plus, exposing college kids to M.F.K. Fisher can only be a good thing!

Hope you feel better soon.

[ammello]

speaking of FAST FOOD NATION, the movie is slow but especially worth while for those who don't really know where their food comes from and/or don't understand the connection between the so-called immigration problem. for many of us it is preaching to the converted but i went to support the effort.