Author: admin

Journal #8

Write about a place you wish you could go for the food. It can be a specific event (the Maine lobster festival) or a specific place (a certain restaurant in New York or whatever) or a place and a time (for example, your grandmother’s house at Thanksgiving in 2019) or a region/country (Provence or Indonesia or whatever). Why this place? What do you imaging eating?

Thursday Active-Writing Assignment #5

Popular music is overflowing with song lyrics that use food to convey something about love, hate, fear, lust, community, exclusion, race, class, gender — basically as a stand-in for some cultural touchstone. Today, I want you to pick one song that uses food to do this in some way and, in your journal, break down how the song does this. Other than AI, you can use whatever resources you want to help form your thoughts. Just be sure to mention any sources or influences on your thinking.

Journal #7

What does Coca-Cola mean to you? Even if you don’t drink it, how do you think about it as a force in the culture? What do you associate with it?

Thursday Active-Writing Assignment #4

Call three people you know — family member, friend, etc. — and tell them that, for your food-writing class, you have to come up with story ideas that touch on the intersection of food and culture. Ask for some ideas. Log these ideas in your journal — even the uninteresting, ridiculous, or incomplete ones — and then pick one that you could envision pursuing in some form. Write a 150-word pitch for this idea. We will discuss these in class on Tuesday 10/8.

Journal #6

To what extent, if at all, do you think/care about where your food comes from? What do I mean by where? Whatever you want it to mean. Geographically, ecologically, figuratively, metaphorically. If you do think/care about this, why? And to what degree? And for what specific foods do you most think about this? If you don’t care about this, why? As with all these journal entries, there is not a right answer here. I’m just curious how much, if at all, you think about the point(s) of origin of the food you eat.

Reading Response #5

Another sequential reading assignment. Your response to the reading below should be in your Journal by the start of class on Tuesday, October 8.

  1. Read this Food Republic Q&A with John Lasater, founder of Hattie B’s.
  2. Then read this Betsy Phillips essay in the Nashville Scene.
  3. Then read this Rachel L. Martin story in the Bitter Southerner.
  4. Respond with several paragraphs of thoughts about these pieces. How, if at all, did your perspective change as you read? How do these stories about a food trend touch on broader cultural issues?

Thursday Active-Writing Assignment #3

  • Go into a gas station or find a vending machine and get something. Bag of Cheetos. Roll of Sweetarts. One Atomic Fireball. Combos. One of those small boxes of Lemonheads or Johnny Apple Treats. Whatever. Some junk food or candy that you like.
  • Find out as much as you can about the origin of that thing you’ve bought. Don’t just use Wikipedia. See if there’s a number or contact info for company who makes it. Call. Write. Do some research. If you’re feeling especially go-gettery, you can even use Nexis Uni or some database from the UA library to look for old newspaper articles about the thing.
  • In addition to the origin of the thing, you could look for episodes throughout history when the thing had a cultural moment. Did a president love them? Or were they on a famous TV show or were they featured on a big Super Bowl commercial or in a viral TikTok? Has Kelis tweeted about them? Etc.
  • Write all this in your journal.