Rhetoric of Food

Rhetoric is the process of understanding where, when, why, and how texts are composed for specific audiences and purposes. Food is, well, food. The texts we will examine and compose together this semester will all relate in various ways to the growing, making, and consuming of food in different cultural and geographic contexts.

Your learning about rhetoric will include your ability to compose and analyze texts made for different purposes, situate texts in time and space, and understand the authors and audiences that participate in the food writing community.

Guiding questions: What are you learning about the way writers express their ideas about food through language? How have those ideas been received by different audiences across time and space? What are the different “food cultures” that are important to us? How does food connect to power, history, politics, race, gender, nationality and other identity markers?

Literacy

Literacy is a term used to describe the mutually influential acts of reading and writing. It encompasses both composition and interpretation: making texts and understanding them.

This semester your learning about literacy will include an examination of your individual reading and writing processes, your strengths and habits as a writer, as well as your challenges. While much of the course relates to the composition of texts, you will also be reading a great deal, learning the habits of reading like a writer and reading for rhetorical analysis. The goal of this course is to develop your proficiency and self-knowledge as a college-level writer, as well as your facility to write effectively across multiple genres, composing texts that are thoughtful, well-documented, easy for readers to understand, and interesting.

Guiding questions: What are you learning about yourself as a reader and interpreter of texts, as well as a writer and maker of texts? What habits and environments are most productive for reading and writing? Least productive? How are you developing your metacognitive ability (self-awareness about your thinking) in relation to reading and writing?

Research

You will be responsible for setting a research agenda within the general topic of the course, seeking out relevant and credible texts in addition to the required readings. Research, like writing, is a process that varies by individual and across content areas.

Over the course of the semester you will acquire knowledge about the world of food writing through your research, including where and how to find texts, what writers are reliable and trustworthy, and what interests you. Your learning about research will include identifying search strategies, using and creating databases, evaluating credibility, organizing sources, and collecting texts to use as both inspiration and models for your own writing.

Guiding questions: What do you know about yourself as a researcher? What tools are helpful for you? What is the research process like for you, in relation to time, organization, documentation? How do you make sense of your research? How do you set and follow through with a research agenda?

Conversation

Literacy research shows the powerful but often invisible role of talk in reading, writing, and learning. Conversation is how we make ourselves known to each other, make sense of our world, and come new understandings. Conversation also requires you to be in dialogue with other human beings and participate in particular discourse communities—to find space for your voice in those communities while also respecting and acknowledging the voices of others. Conversation takes place in person, as well as in writing; citation and attribution are a part of college level writing, and also a way to acknowledge your place in the conversation. Reading is an incredibly important foundation for conversation, and it is our responsibility to come to each class meeting having engaged deeply with the readings. We build conversation around the questions, wonderings, and thoughts that arise from our unique readings of the texts we share as a community.

Your learning about conversation will include participating in whole-group, small-group and one-on-one conversations with your peers and your instructor, as well as written communication in these contexts. You should expect to develop your ability to talk about all of the above three course goals: rhetoric of food, literacy, research, as well as collaborate with others as a writer and as a thinker.

Guiding questions: How are you in dialogue with other readers, writers, and researchers? Who supports you in your work for this class? What kinds of conversations are generative for your learning, understanding, and engagement with the course material? What makes a good conversation about texts? How are you able to talk about texts? What strategies or knowledge have you learned from your classmates through conversation?