Class Schedule

Thursday, 9/28

Introduction

Powerpoint

In-Class Viewing:

Food, Inc. (First Half: 45 minutes)

Viewing Assignment:

Film: Food Inc. (91 minutes)

Recommended Viewing:

Fresh (72 minutes): Highly recommended if you were left feeling overwhelmed by Food, Inc. Access available through the Seattle Public Library on Kanopy, also on Amazon Prime.

Tuesday, 10/3

Vitruvian Homer

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due 2:30 before class)

In-Class Viewing:

The Seven Deadly Sins

Food, Inc. (Second Half)

Reading Assignment:

Susan Bordo, "Reading the Slender Body"

Thursday, 10/5

Lifting the Veil

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

In-Class Viewing (Short Film Clips):

What is Real? (The Matrix)

The Me(a)trix

Food Inc. Opening Credits

Listening Assignment:

400 Years of Sweetness

Tuesday, 10/10

The High Cost of Cheap Food

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

In-Class Viewing:

Argentina's Bad Seeds (25 minutes)

Reading Assignment:

Raj Patel, "Glycine Rex"

Recommended Reading:

The Farm Bill Platform of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Recommended Viewing Assignment:

Soyalism (65 minutes): This film is brilliant in showing the impacts on the environment and social justice of the global expansion of the soy industry. It is, however, somewhat flawed by its tendency towards China bashing. As you watch, it is important to be aware that Smithfield (the largest meat packing corporation in the world) was already a bad actor before it was acquired by a Chinese conglomerate.

How to Green the World's Deserts (Ted Talk by Allan Savory. Savory's research on holistic pasture management was the inspiration of Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm as featured in Food, Inc. and also Skagit River Ranch, a local farm that is a vendor at the U District Farmer's Market on Saturdays.

Thursday, 10/12

A Body Made Productive for Capital

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Second Hour Group Activity: Composing an advocacy letter to send to our representatives in Congress as they renegotiate the Farm Bill. Please make sure you take a look at the following link so you can see where the debate stands:

The Farm Bill Platform of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Advocacy Letter Work Space (google doc)

Reading Assignment:

Julie Guthman and Melanie Dupuis, "Embodying Neoliberalism"

"Is Dietetics a White Bread Thing?"

Recommended:

Naya Jones, "Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience."

Tressie Macmillan Cottom, "Ozempic Can't Fix What Our Culture Has Broken."

Recommended Viewing:

World Food Day, October 16: People's Food Summit

Tuesday, 10/17

Slow Death

Claudia's presentation has been postponed until next Tuesday. We will be doing a video response discussion instead in the second hour.

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Reading Assignment:

Lauren Berlant, "Risky Bigness"

Sandra Cate, "'Breaking Bread with a Spread' in a San Francisco County Jail."

NYT: "Peak Season for Tamales" (Featuring our awesome special guest Claudia Serrato)

Recommended:

Impact Justice Report of Prison Food

Thursday, 10/19

Eat This! Don't Eat That! Dietary Recommendations as Biopower

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Navigating the Food Landscape Workspace

Reading Assignment:

Marion Nestle, "Politics versus Science," and "Deconstructing Dietary Advice."

Recommended:

Industry Influence on Dietary Policy (article from the Guardian)

Corporate Capture (the study on which the Guardian article is based): this article focuses on "the commercial determinants of health."

Tuesday, 10/24

Enterprising Selves

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Prison Cuisine: A research-based presentation by Claudia Serrato

Class will be on campus today, but I have created a zoom link to allow Claudia to participate from Los Angeles. She will begin at 2:30.

Zoom recording (this will only be for Claudia's presentation).

Reading Assignment:

Nikolas Rose, "Governing Enterprising Individuals."

Thursday, 10/26

Diet Wars and The Calorie as a Technology of Self-Governance

Powerpoint (Today's discussion will be on Rose. The discussion of Hite will be included in the ppt for next Tuesday)

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

In-Class Viewing:

Diet Wars (60 minutes)

You can access a transcript of the film here.

You can find the film online in chunks on Daily Motion:

Reading Assignment:

Hite et al.

Recommended:

Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Executive Summary) (2020-25)

Wash Post Op Ed on the new guidelines.

From the News Stream:

"Scientists Don't Agree On What Causes Obesity"

"Why the New Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me."

Tuesday, 10/31

Good Science, Bad Science?

Powerpoint

Please note: This powerpoint also has the slides relating to the Hite reading.

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Campus Food Advocacy Work Space

First Paper Assignment Prompt

Reading Assignment:

Gary Taubes, "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie."

Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens, Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies.

Recommended: Ultra Processed Food and the Corporate Capture of Nutrition.

(a critique of the energy-balance model)

FoodGate: The Break-in, the Cover-up, and the Aftermath. This is a fascinating lecture by scholars at UCLA, based on the documentary evidence of how the food industry has rigged the dietary guidelines to absolve sugar as a major culprit in metabolic disease.

Thursday, 11/2

School Food is Industrial Food

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

In Class Viewing:

Jamie Oliver's School Food Revolution Season 1, Episode 1 (watch footage: 2:12-17:00, 29:20-37:00)

Video Response Work Space

Reading Assignment:

Janet Poppendieck, Free for All (Intro and Chapter One) Ebook through UW Library Portal.

Slocum et al., "Properly with Love, From Scratch." (This is an excellent critique of Jamie Oliver's School Food Revolution)

Monday, 11/6

Re-Membering Relationships of Trust between Sheep and Diné People: One Butchering at a Time.

Dr. Christine Ami (Associate Professor, Diné College) on Monday November 6 from 4:30-5pm in CMU 120.

Recommended Event:

Dr. Ami brings an indigenous perspective to the relationship between the Diné and the animals they raise for food in terms of how they view animal agency and their responsibility to them in life and death.

Sponsored by the Critical Animal Studies Research Group. Maria-Elena Garcia (CHID) and Radhika Govindgrajan (Anthro)

Tuesday, 11/7

Office Hours and Paper Check In on Zoom

No in-person class.

Zoom Link

First Paper Assignment Prompt

You are welcome to drop by the regular zoom meeting with your questions regarding the first paper (due Friday midnight).

Thursday, 11/9

The Paradox of Free and Reduced Lunch

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Small Group Discussion Workspace

Reading Assignment:

Poppendieck ( Chapters Five and Seven)

Friday, 11/10

First Paper Due by Midnight on Canvas: Submit here

Tuesday, 11/14

Local Heroes

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

In-class Viewing (Short Film Clips):

School Lunch in France

School Lunch in Italy (watch footage 2:10-24.23)

Google Doc Exercise: Using "food view" as a tool for critical analysis.

Reading Assignment:

Poppendieck (Chapter Eight)

Black ("Revenge of the Lunch Lady")

Black, "The Triumph of Jamie Oliver's Nemesis." How Alice Gue became a school food reformer.

Supplementary Resources:

Edible Schoolyar d Project

Edible Education 101 (This UC Berkeley Freshman Course has recorded presentations by many of the luminaries of the Food Change Movement).

Thursday, 11/16

A Bone of Contention: How Did School Gardens Become Political?

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

In-Class Viewing:

Growing Hope in the Urban Center

Reading Assignment

Caitlin Flanagan, Cultivating Failure

How Garden-Based Learning Helps Students of Color.

Failure to Cultivate: A Response to Caitlin Flanagan on School Gardens. (Civil Eats)

Recommended:

Indigenous Foodways are the Focus in a Growing Number of Classrooms.

Supplementary Resources:

Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl, "Gardens Cultivate Minds not Failure"

Green School Initiative, "Cultivating Healthy, Lifelong Learners."

Good News Corner: Reconnecting with Ancestral Cuisines

Southern Exposure: the preservation of African American history in seeds.

A local story: BIPOC Farmers producing hard-to-find vegetables for immigrant cuisines.

A guest podcast by our own Claudia Serrato on decolonizing the diet.

Tuesday, 11/21

Ethical Eaters

Class will be on Zoom today:

Zoom Recording: Please note that this lecture will be very helpful in planning out your final paper meal project.

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Reading Assignment:

Judith Farquhar, "Food, Eating, and the Good Life."

Thursday, 11/23

Thanksgiving Holiday (no class)

Tuesday, 11/28

Punk Cuisine

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

Reading Assignment:

Dylan Clark, "The Raw and the Rotten."

Thursday, 11/30

Paleo Fitness

Powerpoint

Discussion Board(Due by 2:30)

In Class Viewing:

Gather (75 minutes)

Reading Assignment:

Carerra-Bastos

Is an All Meat Diet What Nature Intended?

Valasquez-Manoff

Recommended Viewing:

My Big Fat Diet (45 minutes): This film describes what happens when an indigenous community on Vancouver Island return to their traditional diet to reverse metabolic disease.

This film is available online, but it is cut up into chunks. :(

Recommended Reading:

"Friend or Foe? The Role of Animal Source Foods in Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Diets."

Good Magazine

Tuesday, 12/5

Pre-Industrial Diet

Powerpoint

Discussion Board (Due by 2:30)

I will be bringing some samples of the "sacred foods" of the pre-industrial diet for students to taste. I like to describe these foods as the foods we have forgotten to remember to eat! LOL

Reading Assignment:

Ann Anagnost, "Securing the Home Front."

Thursday, 12/7

Office Hours and Paper Check In on Zoom

No in-person class.

Zoom Link

You are welcome to drop by the zoom meeting with your questions regarding the first paper due the following Monday.

Monday, Dec 11

Final Paper Due by Midnight on Canvas. Submit here.