“Online learning and Community-Engaged Pedagogy during a global health crisis: teaching food studies & COVID-19”

ABSTRACT

The pandemic brought traditional learning to a halt, while requiring new and innovative approaches to teach in an online setting. Educators in higher education had to retool and reconfigure their lectures and seminars to provide a fully inclusive environment in which learners could actively engage in course materials, even from a distance. One effective method that lecturers utilized in their courses was community-based pedagogy, which enabled students to apply their knowledge beyond the online classroom, through research projects that allowed them to actively engage with individuals living in their respective areas. This article, which emanates from a roundtable held at the 2021 Association for the Study of Food and Society’s annual meeting, “Community-Engaged Pedagogy in a Time of Online Learning: Teaching Food & COVID-19,” delves into the many and varied ways that lecturers employed this type of pedagogy to meet the needs of their students. Specifically, three of the original panelists, Dr. Kelly A. Spring (George Mason University/University of Southern Maine), Professor Scott A. Barton (NYU), and Professor Amy Bentley (NYU), discuss their online courses in food studies, and how they employed different forms of community-based pedagogy to benefit and support students’ learning during a time of unprecedented educational upheaval.

KEYWORDS:

• Food studies
• online learning
• pandemic
• COVID-19-19
• Community-Engagement
• pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Kelly A. Spring

Kelly A. Spring, PhD., is a lecturer of food studies, women’s history, and gender studies. She has taught at a wide variety of universities, including the University of Southern Maine, George Mason University, and George Washington University. Currently, she works as the Women, Peace and Security Subject Matter Expert with the Marine Corps University in the Krulak Center. Her most recent publication, “‘Little Goodies in His Kit Bag’: British Servicemen, Masculinity, and Feeding the Home Front in World War II”, which appears in Global Food History (September 2021). Her current project, “SPAM Goes to War: American Food Relief to the British Home Front during the Second World War”, uses food as a lens to trace the shifting US-UK relationship in the war. As part of this project, she spoke on the BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, SPAM: food + war + memory in a can in May 2022 about the enduring role of SPAM in Britain and Asia. She also co-convenes the Institute of Historical Research’s Food History Seminar.

Scott A. Barton

Scott A. Barton is a cultural anthropologist of African Diaspora Foodways in the Department of Africana Studies at Notre Dame. He had a 25-year career as an executive chef and culinary educator. He had a 25-year career as an executive chef and culinary educator. Ebony magazine named him one of the top 25 African American/Diaspora chefs. His research and publications focus on women’s knowledge, the intersection of secular and sacred cuisine as a marker of identity politics, cultural heritage, political resistance, and self-determination in Northeastern Brazil. Recent publications include “Radical Moves from the Margins: Enslaved Entertainments as Harvest Celebration in Northeastern Brazil,” in The Body Questions: Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots, “Food and Faith,” in Bryant Terry’s Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from the African Diaspora. His recent exhibition, Buried in the Heart: A Repast for Angels and Martyrs focusing on anti-black violence, funerary foods and African Diaspora ancestral worship opened at Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee as part of his public scholarship. Scott serves on the board of Association for the Study of Food and Society, the Society for the Anthropology of Nutrition, as co-chair of the African Diaspora Religions section of the American Academy of Religion.

Amy Bentley is a professor of food studies at New York University. A historian with interests in the social, historical, and cultural contexts of food, recent works include Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning (2021) co-edited with Simona Stano, and the award-winning Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (2014). The former editor of Food, Culture and Society (2013-2019), she is currently co-editor with Peter Scholliers of the Bloomsbury monograph series Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations. In addition to the Food and COVID-19 NYC Digital Archive, current research projects include the history of food in US hospitals, and the meanings and uses of food production in religious communities.

Amy Bentley

Amy Bentley is a professor of food studies at New York University. A historian with interests in the social, historical, and cultural contexts of food, recent works include Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning (2021) co-edited with Simona Stano, and the award-winning Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (2014). The former editor of Food, Culture and Society (2013-2019), she is currently co-editor with Peter Scholliers of the Bloomsbury monograph series Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations. In addition to the Food and COVID-19 NYC Digital Archive, current research projects include the history of food in US hospitals, and the meanings and uses of food production in religious communities.