I hope that each of you finds ways to relax and replenish yourselves over the Spring Break. This strange year has required a lot of all of us. Even if we have grown used to the challenges of living through a pandemic, the stress has affected all of us, so it is important to have time off!
While you are relaxing, there are two things that I’d like you to think about that will help smooth the way for our last six weeks of the semester when we return.
- Research Topic: Start thinking about your Research Topic. You have a lot of latitude here. Essentially, any food related (or food adjacent) topics will work for this assignment. You will start with a topic, then develop a research question, and begin doing your research. All this will happen beginning right after spring break, so it’s time to start considering what might interest you. Just to get your creative juices going, here are some examples of broad, food-related topics:
laboratory-made “meat”
exploitation of restaurant workers/farm workers/meat packing workers
focus on a single food: quinoa, salt, sushi, tacos, chocolate – what can we learn from its story?
hunger – focus on a particular place/time
food and ritual (focus on a particular culture/food/ritual)
genetic modification of food
diet culture
food deserts
do a food guide to a particular neighborhood
the future of food
eating insects
food and cultural appropriation
the pandemic’s effect on food/eating/restaurants
2. Food-Related Media
As part of our work in the next section of the course, you will be exploring a variety of different kinds of food-related sources and reporting on them to the class. These can include: documentary films, feature films, podcasts, television programs, newspapers and more. You are welcome to find and choose your own sources, but to help you get started, you might want to consult this list. It will give you a sense of what’s possible! If Spring Break leaves you with some leisure time for listening to podcasts or watching movies, you might want to choose something food related. This will give you a head start when we come back after break.