Submit your research essay in pdf. before 10:50 am.
Late submissions:
To be fair to and out of respect for students who submit their work on time, essays submitted after 10:50 am. will be subject to a penalty of one-third of a letter grade.
Late submission cut-off time is 11:59 pm. After the cut-off time, your essay will be subject to a penalty of one full letter grade per day. No exceptions. Plan ahead.
Any corrupted file submission, or missing file, unreadable files, or submission via a link to a drive or website is treated as non-submission. Make sure to hit the "Submit" button.
Research essay length: about 1500-2000 words (include essay, quotes, works cited)
Your essay will be graded for originality, persuasiveness, and insightfulness of argument, strength of textual analysis, use of textual examples, quality of research, synthesis of research ideas, organization, writing skills, MLA format.
Research: Students will appraise the usefulness of research sources, use research as participation in critical dialogue, communicate research materials to an academic audience.
Research materials: Include at least 4 research sources e.g., peer reviewed journal articles, chapter(s) from ebook, online articles, magazines, encyclopedia
Support your argument with references to the chosen texts and research sources. You may consider research information for your topic and texts that is material to your essay. Provide a title for your essay.
This assignment leaves you the choice of which two texts to focus on, what food-related topic to explore, and what relative weight to give to similarities and differences. Alternatively, you may focus mainly on similarities so as to study a food-related topic in the two texts.
Choose two of the following primary texts and write an essay in which you develop a strong argument in a food-related topic.
Make sure you do not choose text(s) that you have analyzed in your short essay, creative response project, or presentation. Essays that do not follow this guideline will receive a zero.
Bob Dylan, “One More Cup of Coffee”
Choose a research topic that you are interested in. Potential research topics:
n.b. Some research topics may overlap one another.
food images, or absence / scarcity of food images
food on social media
food and cultural traditions, cultural authenticity
food and memory (place, home; spiritual connection; death; loss, etc.)
food and identity (cultural, national, gender, social status etc.)
food and capitalism: social injustice, social inequality; mass production food industry; globalization; industrial food and nutrition
healthy food and junk food; fast food stigma; food choice; food snobbery; food prejudice
healthism; clean eating; tech bro biohacking diet; meal replacement; food skincare products
food symbolism; food rituals; food as art; food as language; food as plot device
food and emotion (pleasure, depression, mental health, etc.)
comfort foods
American Dream, assimilation into American culture, respectability; table manners, etiquette
wildlife preservation; sustainable food consumption; environmental degradation; ecological sustainability; blight pathogen and food crop; food and human livelihood
food waste, food insecurity, survival strategies, scavenging, equitable food system, food activism
kitchen; eating space, e.g., outdoors; indoors (eatery, restaurant, at home, etc.)
food and disability
