You have a short reading reflection due most days. The syllabus gives you the particular questions you should respond to in your posts.
These are meant to be low-stakes, creative exercises that help you think holistically about what a reading is trying to do, how it is doing it, how well it succeeds, and what you found most interesting about it. We all notice different things, and that is part of the point.
This course moves quickly, and the readings can be dense. The reflections give you regular practice with the most important historical skill in the course: turning reading into thoughtful interpretation. You are not just collecting information about diet history. You are practicing how to notice arguments, evidence, tone, assumptions, and patterns of authority.
These posts also help the class build a shared conversation. Over time, they should help you see the course arc: diet advice keeps changing, but questions about expertise, trust, bodies, evidence, morality, and common sense keep coming back in new forms.
Read the intro, conclusion, skim various bits carefully, and focus on parts that seem more significant or interesting to you.
Get a sense of the tone, style, rhetoric. What’s the main argument? What’s the evidence to support it? Are you convinced?
Do the necessary work to have an INFORMED opinion. Somewhere in your post, point to a specific passage, example, or moment in the reading that stuck with you — this keeps you anchored in what’s actually on the page, not just a general impression of the topic.
I (and your classmates) are much more interested in reading about YOUR THINKING AND REACTION, rather than a summary of the assignment.
This exercise is NOT about regurgitating information or identifying the “right” answer. There is no right answer! Everyone is going to have a different take on what’s interesting, how things connect, how they don’t, etc. We can all learn a lot from each other, which is why we post work to the discussion board instead of instructor-only spaces.
Post a short response to the specific prompt on the schedule. It should make a point, refer to the reading, and show your own thinking about why the reading matters.
The idea here is that the reflections should in sum account for a significant portion of your final grade without each one being unduly stressful. So they are low-stakes, yet they should hold everyone accountable for engaging with the reading.
Reading reflections appear in Canvas as letter grades. In general, they are graded as A, B, or C.
A: Your post clearly demonstrates broad familiarity with the reading assignment, original thinking, and is clearly articulated.
B: A solid effort to do the above, but with significant shortcomings in several areas.
C: A decent effort, but it does not yet show much engagement with the reading, is primarily summary rather than original thinking, or does not really respond to the prompt. If your work reads like an unedited AI response, you will get a chance to redo it.
D: Looks too much like AI. Even if you didn’t use it, you still have to redo it.