The photo above depicts students enjoying a potluck with Professor An.
Eat!Drink!Savor!Labor!
Drawing from the emerging field of “Food Studies,” this StudioOC class – titled Eat!Drink!Savor!Labor! – synthesizes work from the established fields of French and Sociology. Eat!Drink!Savor!Labor! is a learning community that traces the social life of food, from its agricultural production and processing to its preparation, distribution, and consumption. Students learned about food as a cultural expression and commodity, and restaurants and cafes as sites of human connection as well as injustice. The learning community takes objects that seem familiar–a loaf of bread, a cup of coffee–and makes them strange, detailing their complex histories, uncovering their roles in globalization and colonialism. The learning community also places serious emphasis on the enjoyment of food and the study of new small business models built on principles of social justice and solidarity.
Throughout the class, students watched films that explore the cultural and sociological dimensions of food, as well as learn from local entrepreneurs and community organizers who use food and drink to broaden access to cuisine, to create community events and spaces, and who leverage their work for social justice. The learning community will also include field trips that take advantage of the cultural and culinary resources of the greater Cleveland area.
Thank you to our community partners!
Eat!Drink!Savor!Labor! would not be possible without our amazing community partners who allowed us into their spaces.
- Ezra Baker, Ghost Town Oats, New York, NY
- Joe Waltzer and Eastman Presser, Black River Café, Oberlin, OH
- Max Shrem, PhCheese.com, Middletown, DE
- Kandice Marchant, Marchant Manor Cheese, Cleveland Heights, OH
- Destiny Burns, Cleveland Urban Winery, Cleveland Heights, OH
- Bob Sferra & Tom Francescangeli, Sophie La Gourmande Bakery, Cleveland Heights, OH
- Emily & Jason Bean, Mitchell’s Chocolates, Cleveland Heights
- Brenda Fraizer, Chateau Hough, Cleveland, OH
- Brandon E. Chrostowski, Edwin’s Leadership & Restaurant Institute, Cleveland, OH
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
A land acknowledgement resonates all the more promptly in a course that explores one’s relationship to the land, not only in France but all over. Certainly here in Oberlin, as elsewhere, we dine and drink and learn and labor on stolen lands. We acknowledge that we gather on Indigenous land, including traditional territory of the Erie and Haudenosaunee Confederacies. In the Seneca language, Ohi:yo’ is a Good Flowing Stream, and we honor those who have stewarded northeast Ohio’s waters and lands across the generations. This calls us to commit to continuing to learn how to be better stewards of the resources that sustain us as well. Want to learn more? Native Land Digital; Treaty of Fort Industry.
