Eating Your Ecology, Spring 2012
(3 credits, English)
In our era of fast grub, rock-bottom prices, and huge supermarkets (stocked year-round with food that is only ripe thousands of miles away), people have begun to take steps to know more about their food. This movement takes many forms, including Organic, Free-Range, Locavore, and Slow Food. In this course, we will read texts that have helped popularize the need and the techniques for paying more attention to what we put into our bodies and how the way food is produced impacts the environment.
The syllabus will include works by Henry David Thoreau, Upton Sinclair, Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Wendell Berry, and more!
This is a hands-on course! We will visit and work on three farms tied to the local food economy in State College. We will grow more conscious about our own consumption by thinking about where the food we eat comes from, encountering producers through local farmers' markets, and writing about our experiences with the local food community. Finally, along with sharing food each week in class, we'll cook a meal together, using only local, sustainably produced food to end the semester in style! Good nourishment for body and mind: that's the goal of this course.
English 297D Class
Every Tuesday of the spring semester, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Classroom: 121 Thomas Building
Farm Trips
February 25: Blue Rooster Farm Tours
March 31–April 1: Mystic Springs Farm Work Weekend
April 21: T B D
