Do you like food? Do you, at the very least, have some sort of relationship with food? If so, WRD 376 Field Work in Arts Writing: Food Writing may be a course you take next quarter. Professor Carolyn Vos will urge students to “explore how physical, emotional, and cultural dimensions of food can help shape compelling narratives.”
Over the course of the quarter, students will have a chance to engage with fieldwork and come to understand the intersection between storytelling identity and culture. The first assignment of the quarter requires that students go to an art museum and engage with their surroundings, including a self-selected piece of art that relates to food. They will then write about how food is represented in art and history. Students will also get the chance to interview someone about their personal food story, as well as a sensory narrative: describe something so well that Professor Vos is transported to that time, space, and taste. The culmination of all of the learned skills throughout the course will be an open-ended narrative food story.
WRD 376 is about learning how to write intentionally and understanding it as an art form. This course provides a space for students to “dip their toes into a lot of different styles and then come back to class and learn. ‘What did my classmates find, and can I rethink how I have done this?’ This class is very collaborative.”
Professor Vos also plans to have guest speakers across all professions, from art curators to sports journalists. These interactions will give students the opportunity to garner insight across many disciplines and transferable skills that can be taken outside of field writing.
Culture and community are at play when it comes to food and traditions surrounding food, and this course asks the question, “Food is a shared experience. How do you write about that?”
Ultimately, the goal of this course is to create connections between field writing and other forms of writing, as well as to understand how food brings people together and is more than just something you should eat three times a day.
“No matter where you are from, where you were raised, we all have interactions with food. That can be a place for us to understand each other and create common ground with one another. It is such an easy entry point for creating community.”
If you are interested in this new experiential learning course, Course Carts are open! Check out the rest of the WRD blog for more course spotlights to see what is being offered in Spring Quarter.