This page, and the schedule page, have all the instructions and assignments you need for the course. Make sure you are very familiar with these two pages. We use UNM Learn to manage quizzes, assignment submissions, and the discussion board, but all course information is on these two pages.
While I hope the syllabus is self-explanatory, you should take a few minutes to watch the introductory video.
When you think of Mexican food, or Italian, or Chinese, a range of dishes and ingredients immediately spring to mind. Why is that? What constitutes a “national” cuisine? Does this concept even make sense anymore? What about American food? Is there (or was there ever) such a thing? How much does the history of American Food present a different kind of American History from we typically hear? How are ideas of nationalism reflected in our foodways?
The goal of this course is to see how much fun we can have exploring different perspectives on the concept of national cuisine and American food. There will be some history, but that’s beside the point. Never shall we care about memorizing and regurgitating supposedly important historical “facts”.
Some questions we’ll tackle: What have Americans eaten over time? Why? How do we construct identities through food? How much have immigration and regionalization shaped dietary preferences? How have dietary and nutritional advice altered perceptions of food and cuisine over the 20th century? How have relatively recent global industrial conglomerates shaped the idea of what constitutes American food? What can the future of American food learn from its past?
As an upper level history course compressed into a month, this class is meant to be a challenge. But I do recognize that it’s summer, that we’re still recovering from last semester, that we’re still living under weird circumstances, and we all have busy lives outside of class even when not amidst a pandemic. AND YET: We can work hard and learn a lot together without taking ourselves too seriously.
Not having actual class meetings (as the course normally does) deprives us of some collegial conversation, but it presents new freedoms as well. There isn’t much to do most days except do the reading, reflect on it, write a brief response, and occasionally respond to your colleagues. There are a few slightly longer assignments that give you the chance to apply the readings more directly.
In order to keep us learning at an even pace, the main work/fun that determines your grade are the daily reading responses.
The little equations after the assignment type indicates number of assignments x points for each = total points
This totals 136 points, which is weird, but there’s no difference between having 136 or a round number like 100. Your “grade” is determined by percent, as indicated below.
The schedule page indicates all due dates for course work; all assignments should be uploaded to UNM Learn by the end of the day they are listed (by midnight).
There is no formal attendance, obviously. But everyone does need to attend to and engage with our various digital platforms. These help you learn and show me you’re learning—both required to get credit for the course.
I encourage students to post quick replies to other posts when something resonates with them—something you found interesting, insightful, funny, totally wrong, and so on. This is part of your effort and engagement with the course that you will point to when doing self-assessment (both weekly and in the final assessment). As far as official requirements go, you are required only to post your own reading response.
For a bit more elaboration on what’s below, I’ve highlighted a key points in this screencast.
As far as feedback goes, I think it’s far more useful to think together and have an ongoing conversation than to give you a score or grade that supposedly indicates how “well” you’re doing the assignment. What matters most is the effort you are putting into the readings and responses, and YOU are the best person to score that. So you will be submitting as part your assignment submission YOUR OWN SCORE that reflects the work you put into them. I will comment on whether I think your grade is vastly inappropriate given how it compares to what others are doing. With very few exceptions, the score you give yourself is the score you get for that assignment.
For your FINAL learning reflection, you will give yourself a grade for the course. Unless there is a serious mismatch between the quality of work you’ve submitted and the grade you indicate, that is the grade will get for the course.
While always a last resort, I can always override your score on any particular assignment or on your final grade. I will let you know whenever this happens, and you will have ample feedback as to why. For example, if you write 50 words on a 800-word assignment and give yourself the max points for that assignment, I will simply not acknowledge the legitimacy of your score and give you my own (and it will be low because you made me do it).
I do not micromanage or nitpick points. If I think the assignment looks like an 8 but you report your effort is worth a 9, then you get a 9. If I think the assignment looks like an 6 compared to other submissions, but you give yourself a 9, I will explain how your reported effort doesn’t really match what I’m seeing from other students and encourage you to adjust it. If you give yourself an 8 but I think it’s some of the best work in class, I will explain how you might be underscoring your work and encourage you to adjust it. But except for extreme cases (as noted above), you get whatever score you decide is an honest indicator of your effort. After one or two assignments (by the end of the first week), we’re all pretty much on the same page.
Please trust me that the total points you earn over the month and your final grade, even when YOU determine them, will average out to almost exactly what I would have given you, even if you and I would have scored some assignments a bit differently. That’s one reason there are lots of small assignments.
Some of you just want a C to fulfill a UNM requirement. Some of you want a B to maintain a solid GPA. Some of you want an A because top grades are really important to you. You all already know what your own average, good, or excellent effort feels like. So put in the work that justifies the grade you want for each assignment. There’s more to learn in the class than anyone (including me) can learn in four weeks. Me evaluating you on what you’ve learned in an assignment—as if there are only a few ideas that worth learning—or especially over the entire month doesn’t make any sense. So you should put in the work that meets your needs and report it honestly.
I don’t really grade your work, but I will engage with your responses as much as possible over the course (given that there are about 60 students and I’m covid-home-schooling two toddlers). I love having conversations even on the awkward Learn Discussion Board. Please reply!
It does. But you might be thinking: Why not just do the absolute minimum and give yourself max points and an A for course? Three reasons.
| Points | Grade |
|---|---|
| 118+ | A |
| 110-117 | A- |
| 102-109 | B+ |
| 95-101 | B |
| 88-94 | B- |
| 81-87 | C+ |
| 74-80 | C |
| 68-73 | C- |
| 61-67 | D+ |
| 54-60 | D |
| 53- | F |
I heartily encourage you to speak with me at any time about how I think you’re doing in the class and how it can be improved (if at all). If life gets overwhelming during the course, it’s easy to drift away from an intensive elective course like this, especially an online course. PLEASE DON’T! Rather than disappear, let’s talk about how we can accommodate your circumstances, including figuring out a target grade, reduced assignments, switching to CR/NC grade mode, etc.
You are always welcome and encouraged to ask for MORE FEEDBACK about assignments. I do my best to respond to your work and keep a conversation going, but there’s about 60 students in this class so unfortunately I can’t respond to everyone everyday. But I want to make sure everyone is getting as much feedback from me as they want.
As a way of keeping our conversation going, even if you’re more of a fly-on-the-wall type, we use a Slack channel. To join, first click the invitation link.
Slack is a straightforward collaborative messaging platform (via your browser or desktop/mobile app) that allows us to stay connected without more formal emails or messages in UNM Learn. I get notifications about messages so I can get back to you quickly. You can message me directly and privately in Slack, but email might be best for personal or private issues.
You are NOT REQUIRED to use Slack. HOWEVER, as a way to encourage you to post questions, comments, insights, observations, etc, about the readings, a consistent (but not necessarily heavy) engagement with our Slack channel will help you BOOST YOUR FINAL GRADE to the next grade level (B+ to A-, for instance). In your learning refection, you’ll be able to point to your continued participation as justification for a higher final grade.
What does consistent engagement or participation mean? There’s really no point in quantifying something like this (a “you need to post 2 questions and 1 comment” type thing), as that’s really against the spirit of why we’re using it. If you are posting a few comments, questions, and/or quick replies each week, that’s perfect. Hopefully you’ll be reading through what other people post even more often—that’s the fun part!!—but there’s no way of quantifying that. Overall, it’s a low stakes way for everyone to learn together and get other perspectives in a quick and informal manner—and makes up a little bit for never getting together in person. Please consider jumping in!
Most of the reading for the course are book chapters, short articles, blog posts, and the like. These are accessible through a platform called Zotero. All relevant directions are posted here. Once you’ve completed those steps, you can access our course readings here.
In addition, a crucial aspect of this course is learning how to read critically about food across a variety of forms, including books. How America Eats is our month-long guide that we read chapter by chapter throughout the course; two other books we’ll read over the course of a week and discuss how they use food to reframe US History.
Rude, Emelyn. Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America’s Favorite Bird (Pegasus Books, 2017). Amazon
Specht, Joshua. Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019). Amazon
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014). online
If you peek at the reading schedule page, you might think there is a lot of reading. You’re right! As an intensive 1H course, there IS a lot of reading. This is unavoidable because I respect the challenges and demands of a compressed four-week course that ostensibly provides comparable intellectual rigor as a full-semester course. But the workload is comparable to any average 1H upper-level humanities course, whether in person or online.
Obviously we can’t just quadruple the reading load for each day. So, it’s not quite double that of a typical upper-level history course. Even then, you cannot possibly read every word, or every page, or master all the ideas, and that’s just fine. I DO expect you to gain a familiarity across all the readings so that you can write a thoughtful response about them. Because we’re covering so much ground so quickly, broad familiarity is far more important than specific details (although hopefully some historical detail will stick with you).
True literacy is not just understanding words and sentences. It’s being able to read relatively quickly, think critically about what you read, and take away something useful from it (or decide you don’t need to).
Almost all readings are meant for a broad (largely non-academic) audience and therefore are relatively quick and engaging reads. At the same time, they are smart, articulate, and give us plenty to talk about, especially as we put them in conversation with each other, and how they tell very different stories of American Food.
You don’t have to read every word carefully to take away some useful ideas from the readings. You simply need to read enough and carefully enough to form an opinion on how the authors approach their topics, what kind of argument they make, what kinds of sources they use, how they differ from each other, why you do or don’t like it, etc. This is what you’ll be writing about in your reading responses.
CAPS Tutoring Services is a free-of-charge educational assistance program available to UNM students enrolled in classes. Online services include the Online Writing Lab, Chatting with or asking a question of a Tutor.
The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodations of their disabilities. If you have a disability requiring accommodation, please contact me immediately to make arrangements as well as Accessibility Services Office in 2021 Mesa Vista Hall at 277-3506 or http://as2.unm.edu/index.html. Information about your disability is confidential.
You should be familiar with UNM’s Policy on Academic Dishonesty and the Student Code of Conduct which outline academic misconduct defined as plagiarism, cheating, fabrication, or facilitating any such act.