ENC 3310 - FALL 2026 - Laganas

Our course explores how food constructs identities, relationships, and power dynamics through crafting nonfiction prose such as articles and personal essays. Based on NYU’s Food Studies Program, “food is a lens through which to view and analyze key political, economic, and cultural problems facing today’s globalized world.” The writers whose work we will consume represent a smorgasbord of social, cultural, political, and aesthetic perspectives. Together, these authors exemplify how meals are not mundane but rather inseparable from universal categories such as gender, culture, place, class, race, and politics. To inspire our own articles and personal essays, we will feast on a buffet of works by Anthony Bourdain, Nora Ephron, Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, Haruki Murakami, Ann Patchett, Anthony Doerr, Judith Jones, Calvin Trillan, Ruth Reichl, Laurie Colwin, Amanda Hesser, and others. We will emphasize writing as a process, including brainstorming, drafting, workshopping, revising, and editing. Pull up a chair to the table as we evaluate how meals are similar to nonfiction in that both are shared experiences that bring people together.