ABOUT THE COURSE

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing of love and the hunger for it…I tell about myself, and how I ate brown bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness.” – M.F.K. Fisher (Forward to The Gastronomical Me, 1943)

Hunger, sustenance, gluttony, nourishment. We must eat to survive, but the consumption of calories and nutrients is just part of our obsession with food. For centuries cooks, readers, eaters, and writers have used language to attempt to understand what happens when we eat, how we feed ourselves, and our connections to food. The history of food writing is a long one, stretching as far back as agricultural civilization, but in recent years we have seen a proliferation of texts written about food in the form of cookbooks, memoirs, histories, blogs, online “foodie” community message boards, farm-to-table and agricultural policy briefs, food justice manifestos, and even scholarship about food. These diverse texts delve into every aspect of food: its production and consumption; its connections to identity, culture, and history; its pleasures and power. But what are these various forms of writing supposed to communicate? Who produces them and reads them? What does food writing really say about the visceral experiences of cooking and eating? Writing tells us how to prepare food, critiques and evaluates its quality, evokes memories and emotions, preserves traditions, and creates food communities in digital and physical spaces.

In this course we will explore and analyze contemporary and historical writing about food in many forms of texts. Students will also have the opportunity to apply what they have learned by composing two pieces of original food writing: a recipe and a text in a genre of their choice. Throughout these investigations of food writing, there will be a focus on understanding how these texts work at structural and functional levels, as well as students’ ability to implement text genre conventions in their own writing.

COURSEWORK

Your work for this course includes active, respectful participation in class discussion, out-of-class research and writing, self-assessment with the Learning Record, and the following major writing assignments:

• Unit 1: Recipes: Write a Recipe (due 9/13)
• Unit 2: What food writing is out there? Annotated Bibliography (due 10/13)
• Unit 3: Rhetorical Analysis Genre Conventions Paper (due 11/1)
• Unit 4: Choice Genre Composition Original Food Writing (due 11/29)

An ongoing part of your coursework will be maintaining a writer’s notebook. This tool serves as space for you to collect your thinking, try out writing strategies from this course, and reflect on your development as a writer. Your notebook might be material or digital, it might be a series of individual documents, or multiple entries in one document. Regardless of the format you choose for your notebook, it needs to be in class every day and able to be shared with your instructor at the midterm. The content of your notebook will serve as the foundation for your formal compositions, as well as your periodic process reflections and Learning Record evaluations.

DEADLINES & LATE WORK

Unless otherwise noted, assignments are due by the start of class (2:30 pm), and will be considered late if submitted after that time. After four days (including weekends), late work will not be accepted. If you would like to discuss special circumstances related to deadlines, you must request modifications in writing and receive confirmation from your instructor at least 24 hours in advance of the assignment’s original deadline.

WRITING FLAG

This course carries the Writing Flag. You will write regularly during the semester, completing both short and long writing projects. Furthermore, you will, and receive feedback from your instructor and your peers. Based on this feedback, you will have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments. A substantial portion of your grade to comes from your written work. Writing Flag classes meet the Core Communications objectives of Critical Thinking, Communication, Teamwork, and Personal Responsibility, established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

SCHOLASTIC RESPONSIBILITY

Turning in work that is not your own, or any other form of scholastic dishonesty, will result in a major course penalty, possibly failure of the course. This standard applies to all drafts and assignments, and a report of the incident will be submitted to the Office of the Dean of Students and filed in your permanent UT record. Under certain circumstances, the Dean of Students will initiate proceedings to expel you from the University. So, take care to read and understand the Statement on Scholastic Responsibility, which can be found online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/rhetoric/firstyearwriting/plagiarismcollusion.php. If you have any doubts about your use of sources, ask your instructor for help before handing in the assignment.

EMAIL ACCOUNTS

Email is an official means of communication at UT Austin, and your instructor will use this medium to communicate class information. You are therefore required to notify the University of your preferred email account and to check it daily. All students may claim an email address at no cost by going to http://www.utexas.edu/its/utmail/.

DATA MANAGEMENT

Back up your data! Computers, phones, and all electronic devices with processors, will break or malfunction. It is your responsibility to manage the data that is important to you, including your work for this class. You have many options to do so quickly and affordably, from cloud storage with your UTexas Box account, as well as external hard drives or flash drives.

Files need to be readable across operating systems so that your classmates and instructor can provide feedback. It is your responsibility to turn in documents with specific file extensions, which may mean budgeting time to convert those files prior to turning them in electronically, checking for formatting errors and ensuring readabiliy. This is all part of your work for this class, and the work of writing.

GRADING

Your grade for this course will be determined by a series of reflective evaluations and a portfolio of your work. This system, called the Learning Record, is a collaborative assessment that you, the student, and the instructor will create together. The Learning Record (LR) documents for this course were adapted from the originals, which can be found online at learningrecord.org. Click here for more information about the Learning Record in this course.