Professor Tanya Bakhmetyeva (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Department) and I co-teach a course titled Food Matters: Gender, Ethnicity, Religion and Justice. The course encourages students from all disciplines to participate in a series of experiences that use food as a space for conversations around important social topics that are often difficult to discuss in typical social situations. For example, we Skyped with Cyndi Reeves, the first female hunter and harpooner in her Native Alaskan tribe, and discussed the effects of colonization on First Nation people. We shared dinner with the Imam at a local mosque and discussed Islamophobia. We met with undocumented migrant workers and a group of African American women starting urban gardens for predominantly black residents of Rochester’s neighborhoods in an effort to cease food apartheid. We cooked with Philomena Emeka-Iheukwu while having a conversation about her experience as a Somalian refugee and learned about female empowerment through her experience of entrepreneurship. We visited Food Link, a local food organization determined to end food security in the city and participated in a Conflict Kitchen: Palestine workshop with Dawn Weleski. Throughout these experiences, the students taking the course for studio art credit would respond with paintings, drawings, performances, podcasts, sculptures, bookmaking, and other forms of media. The students taking the course for GSW, Religion, or History credit would respond with critical essays. Each student made their/her/his own cookbook and we created a curated class cookbook using examples of the students’ works. At the end of the semester, we hosted a community “cook-back” banquet, where students made recipes based upon things that they learned from our community leaders.
EXAMPLES OF EXPERIENCES:
EXAMPLES OF STUDENT RESPONSES:
THE FINAL BANQUET:
The course was made possible by a Teaching Innovation Grant in addition to a grant from the Humanities Center and a grant from the Rochester Center for Community Leadership at the University of Rochester.