Sharpless 416
Ken Koltun-Fromm
Haverford College
Gest 201
Office Hours: Tuesdays 11:15-12:15 in VCAM Lounge
610-896-1026 (office) 610-645-8324 (home)
kkoltunf@haverford.edu
Tuesday 12:30-3:30, Wednesday 9:30-11:30; Thursday 12:30-3:30
Summary
Decisions about how to cook and what to eat are not only about the nutritional demands of our physical bodies. They are also guided by who we take ourselves to be: our beliefs and habits, our individual and collective identities, and the people, places, and histories we seek to connect with and feel responsible to. These are also central concerns of religious traditions, where food practices embody ethical, legal, theological, and normative claims about community, self, and right conduct.
This course explores the role of food and eating in religion, with a particular focus on American religions. We will consider how religious food practices—including dietary laws, feast days, fasts, and other rituals and foodways—construct religious identities, social bodies, and ethical ideals.
Books to Own
Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies
Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat and Live
Michael Twitty, The Cooking Gene
Zeller, et al., Religion, Food, & Eating in North America
Requirements
Preparation for class discussions is required and necessary. You should be fully prepared to engage the course material, and offer reflective analysis upon the reading assignments as well as comments made by others. We will do short, reflective writing in class, together with prepared writing on the assigned readings before our class meetings.
You will write four, doubled-spaced essays during this five-week summer session. Your final (fourth) paper will be a co-written reflective analysis on your symposium and food presentations.
Essays
You will write four (all double-spaced) essays over the course of these five weeks that follow the same preparatory structure (except for your final, reflective essay): you will turn in a draft on Monday at Noon and a final draft on Friday at 4 pm. All drafts (initial and final) will be turned in electronically on the Moodle site for this course in the appropriate folder. The process works like this: I will discuss in our Wednesday class the paper assignment due the following Monday; I will then read and comment on those Monday drafts by Tuesday so we can discuss them in tutorial groups at our Tuesday meeting; we will take additional time on Wednesday to discuss your writing, and again on Thursday for peer-to-peer review; and finally, your revised essay will be turned in on Friday at 4 pm. All three essays follow this structure, but note that as you revise one paper you will also be thinking about the next. Your final 3-4 page reflective essay will comprise a critical analysis of your Symposium and food presentation on Thursday, August 1.
Your first essay will be a 2-3 page textual analysis paper. In this paper you want to focus on a specific passage of the text and analyze it in a way that helps me become a better reader of it. To do this you want to focus on what the text means and not on what it says. Think about peeling away layers as you go deeper into your analysis. Your introduction should be a concise summary of your argument (consider writing this last), and your conclusion should open up your paper to related issues not fully covered in your argument. You want to err on the side of ever increasing details that draw out textual nuances, and try to refrain from general observations.
Your second essay will be a 3-4 page textual analysis paper like the first one, but it will include critical engagement with secondary sources. These sources may come from class readings or from material researched at our library. There are two ways to use secondary materials in your paper: 1) the first is historical, in which you bring in historical context to highlight something distinctive about your text. This is but one way to use historical analysis. It could be that historical context allows you to make other claims about the text. But in all cases, this secondary work strengthens, deepens, and nuances your critical, textual analysis; 2) the second explores how one could draw from a theoretical discussion to help analyze some particular issue in your text. Here too you want to bring in this secondary source to further your own commentary. In both examples, it’s important to “set up” your secondary work by explaining why this work is important for your analysis. You use secondary sources to help become a better reader of your text, and you want to explain how that source enables you to do that. You also want to elucidate the meaning of that secondary text, and not merely quote it and tell me what it says. I am asking you to strengthen and deepen your textual analysis by drawing on another voice that helps you articulate your own, but also one that allows you to insert your own voice into the academic discussion. So continue to work at going deeper into a text, peeling away the layers of meaning through textual analysis, and now add another textual source to help you do that well. As part of this assignment, when you turn in your draft on Monday July 15th, you must include a number count for “to be” and passive verbs in your draft.
Your third essay will be a 4-5 page synthetic, broader thesis paper on food and religion that includes textual analysis and secondary sources. This is more of a thematic paper in which I want you to pursue a thesis on food and religion. Any text or texts read in class could be the focus for this paper, but it may not be a revised version of one of your previous papers. Topics may include any of those discussed in class, or other issues that you have discussed with me.
Your final reflective paper, due on the last day of Chesick (Friday, August 2 at 4 pm) will be a co-written paper with your partner about your symposium and food presentation.
Symposium and Food Presentations
At the symposium on Thursday morning, August 1st you and your partner will present a six-eight minute talk about food and religion, which will include substantive examples that illustrate your thesis claims. This talk may include visual presentations of images (with PowerPoint or other presentation software), and should concisely depict a critical area of analysis from class readings and discussions.
That Thursday afternoon we will prepare and present food that will connect to, materialize, and in many ways realize the very issues discussed in the symposium presentation. We will determine the framework for this event as a class: it may be that each group presents their own foods, or we might combine groups and so present only two food presentations, but we could also decide to do one grand food presentation that combines all the symposium presentations. This “food event” will be served to the entire Chesick community.
On Friday, August 2nd, you will turn in a co-written three-four page reflection paper on your symposium and food presentation. This critical, reflective paper will consider, among other things, the process by which you converted oral arguments into material presentations. How did you think about translating your oral arguments at the symposium into a sumptuous food presentation? You want to consider how your food presentation relates to key themes in your symposium talk.
Grading
Your final grade will be based on the above assignments, with significant weight placed on your engagement in class discussions. I do not evaluate each task with percentage accuracy (your final paper is not worth, for example, 30% of your grade), but I instead examine all your work as a piece, and provide a grade that I hope fairly expresses the work and attention rendered to class assignments, your peers in class, and your class participation. This process also allows me to take into account improvement over the course of the summer. This grade is not recorded with your course credit, but it is an important marker of your performance during the Chesick program. I will also write a paragraph evaluation that I will privately discuss with you.
If you require any kind of accommodations due to learning differences please contact me privately early in the summer so we can plan a course of action.
My Policy on Technology in the Classroom:
You must bring all readings to class and be prepared to read, cite, and engage those texts in the seminar. Some of you may prefer to bring in computers or other technology to access these readings (instead of printing them out as a hard copy). For those who wish to use computers or other devices in the classroom, you may not use those devices for anything other than engaging in and committing to the seminar. When we step into the seminar room we become a community of learners, and this community requires commitment and attention. If computers or other technical devices interfere with that learning process then I will no longer allow those devices in the classroom. This means that if your use of a computer or similar device prevents you or any of your peers from fully engaging the class, then you will be required to remove your device from class. Only under special conditions may you use a cell phone for communication in the classroom; normally these devices must be turned off or left outside the room. The basic premise is this: we should use technology when it enables robust commitment to the seminar; we should leave it alone when it undermines that commitment. Please come and see me if you have concerns about using technology in the classroom.
Week One: Shaping the Religious Body: Food, Diet, and Discipline
Monday, July 1 (9:30-11:30)
Overview of Course
Leela Prasad, Poetics of Conduct, 4-7
David Grumett, “Dynamics of Christian Dietary Abstinence,” 3-4
Tuesday, July 2 (12:30-3:30)
Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies, Introduction and chapter five
Gwen Shamblin, The Weigh Down Diet, 1-11, 109-111, 115-121, 127-131
In class: How I Footnote; Setting up a Quote; Opening Sentences
Wednesday, July 3 (9:30-11:30)
Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies, 140-159
Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, 1-21
Leonard Primiano, “And as we Dine, We Sing and Praise God,” 42-67
Discussion of first paper
Week Two: Food and Religious Identity
Monday, July 8
First paper draft due at Noon (2-3 pages)
Tuesday, July 9 (12:30-3:30)
Read Peace Mission Movement Response
Discussion of Essays (Tutorials) “The Revising Process”
Tutorial Group #1: Ebony, Daniela, Jaz, Bilikisu
Tutorial Group #2: Tien, Rubi, Carlos, Magnolia
Wednesday, July 10 (9:30-11:30)
Linda Flower, “Writer-Based Prose” (both Chesick classes together for first hour)
Nancy Sommers, “Revision Strategies” (both Chesick classes together for first hour)
Discuss Writing Samples
Discussion of second paper
Thursday, July 11 (12:30-3:30) No Class
Peer-to-peer review of first papers
Friday, July 12
First paper due at 4 pm (2-3 pages)
Week Three: Forming the Religious Group: Food, Rituals, and Societies
Monday, July 15
Second paper draft due at Noon (3-4 pages)
Tuesday, July 16 (12:30-3:30)
Cookbooks—Magnolia will present one cookbook that grounds itself in one or more religious traditions. She will explore how these cookbooks imagine religion through foodways and practices.
Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene, 1-24
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-cooking-gene-michael-twitty-baqmq2/
Wilson and Alphona, Ms. Marvel, (seven pages)
Joann Sfar, The Rabbi’s Cat, 1-11, 49-51, 68-71, 82-87, 114-119, 142
Discussion of Essays
Wednesday, July 17 (9:30-11:30)
Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, Introduction and chapter two
Discuss Writing Samples
Discussion of third paper
Thursday, July 18 (12:30-3:30)
Henry Goldschmidt, Race and Religion Among the Chosen People of Crown Heights, 116-160
Anna Deveare Smith, “Fires in the Mirror”
Daniel Sack, Whitebread Protestants, 1-7, 61-97
Peer-to-peer review of second papers
Friday, July 19
Second paper due at 4 pm (3-4 pages)
Week Four: Eating, Ethics, and Identity Reconsidered
Monday, July 22
Third paper draft due at Noon (4-5 pages)
Tuesday, July 23 (12:30-3:30)
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables, chapters one and two
Discussion of Essays (Tutorials)
Tutorial Group #1:
Tutorial Group #2:
Wednesday, July 24 (9:30-11:30)
Jeff Wilson, “Mindful Eating: American Buddhists and Worldly Benefits,” 214-33
Samira Mehta, “I Chose Judaism but Christmas Cookes Chose Me,” 154-72.
Discuss Writing Samples
Discuss Symposium and food presentations
Thursday, July 25 (12:30-3:30)
How to do Presentations (both Chesick classes together for first hour)
Elizabeth Pérez, “Crystallizing Subjectivities in the African Diaspora: Sugar, Honey, and the Gods of Afro-Cuban Lucumí,” 175-94
Derek Hicks: “An Unusual Feast: Gumbo and the Complex Brew of Black Religion,” 134-53
Peer-to-peer review of third papers
Friday, July 26
Third paper due at 4 pm (4-5 pages)
Week Five: Doing Food
Monday, July 29
Outlines for Symposium Presentations and food event, due at Noon
Tuesday, July 30 (12:30-3:30)
Review Symposium Presentations (both Chesick classes together for first hour)
Wednesday, July 31 (9:30-11:30)
Shopping for food event
Thursday, August 1
Symposium Presentations (9:00-12:00)
Food Presentations (5:00-7:00), VCAM kitchen
Friday, August 2
Final reflective paper due at 4 pm (3-4 pages)
