Taste: Food, Life, and Literature [6-weeks, $250 Suggested]
Instructor: Hollis | Mondays, January 24-February 28 | 7:00-9:00 PM ET
Literature is steeped in food. For T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, it can break him from his daily drudgery: “Do I dare eat a peach?” For writers as different as Marcel Proust and Ralph Ellison, and food as different as madeleines and yams, it floods them with memories of childhood. It can even be funny, like when Allen Ginsberg imagines Walt Whitman in a grocery store demanding to know “who killed the pork chops?” Whether it is a metaphorical plum or a literal gorgonzola sandwich, food matters as much in the stories we read as it does in the lives we lead.
In this class, we will look at food and its presence in our lives and our literature through different perspectives, including sex, comfort, sustainability, survival, memory, and community. We will think about how food can nurture and delight us but we will also think about how food has the potential to harm us. We will read everything from Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” in which he proposes a unique solution to the Great Famine in Ireland to excerpts from Francesca Ekwuyasi’s new novel Butter Honey Pig Bread.
In addition to texts mentioned above, possible readings may include the one’s mentioned above as well as excerpts from Kiese Laymon’s Heavy and Roxane Gay’s Hunger, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, David Wong Louie’s “Bottles of Beaujolais,” and excerpts and essays from a wide range of food writing.
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We depend on a mix of direct student donations and supplemental donations to make all classes pay-what-you-can. Please pick the pricing tier that corresponds with your needs and that you are able to pay now. If you would like to pay in installments, make your first payment now and make a note on your check-out form. If you would like to donate more later in the term, you can always come back and use the “Make a One Time Donation” button! To use a full scholarship, just pick the $3 tier to cover site/processor fees.
If at any point up to 48 hours before your first class session you realize you will be unable to take the class, we will work with you to reallocate your funds to a future class, to another student’s scholarship, or refund it. After classes begin, we are only able to make partial refunds and adjustments.