Thread by @EmilyContois

{1} Hi Pop Culture & Pedagogy Twitter Conference! I’m Emily Contois, a professor in Media Studies at @utulsa. I’m happy to share with you today “Taking Food Media Public as Pop Culture Pedagogy.” #POPC1

{2} About me: I'm a scholar of U.S. consumer culture & media focusing on food, bodies & health. I hold a PhD & an MA in American Studies from @brownu, an MLA from @GastronomyatBU & an MPH in Public Health Nutrition from @UCBerkeley. #POPC1

emilycontois.com

{3} This presentation draws from my course Food Media (#foodxmedia) at @utulsa, which centers justice and power in the study of food-related media & popular culture. Here are our course objectives. #POPC1

{4} Our #foodxmedia course considers food as a medium, and we also study a number of food media forms. #POPC1

{5} In addition to the course’s diverse and varied readings, it employs learning that is sensory, embodied, and community engaged, as students boldly experiment with new forms of tasting, writing, and photography. #POPC1

{6} I also teach Media and Popular Culture at @utulsa. I’ve enjoyed thinking with students about what pop culture is, its history, how we study it, and why it matters, esp. when most folks dismiss it as trivial. Similar questions, stakes, and tensions apply to food media. #POPC1

{7} When I first announced #foodxmedia, there was interest in it from beyond the students enrolled, so I sought ways to take the course public and to welcome various publics into our class. Here, I summarize two strategies. #POPC1

{8} First, instead of using our LMS, I made the course syllabus freely available online on my blog. This was an effort to extend the privileges of the university beyond the walls of my classroom and to create a larger community of learning. #POPC1

emilycontois.com/2019/08/01/foo…

{9} Second, I invited more than thirty authors (both professors/academics and food writers/journalists) to be part of our class via Twitter, so that students could directly interact with them after we read their words. #POPC1

{10} Logistically, I assigned the course’s reading on the first day of class. Each student was responsible for 5-6 readings over the semester. They wrote 3-5 questions for each author, submitting them to me over email by 8 am on the day of class. #POPC1

{11} I then created Twitter threads for each day of class. Here is an example from one of our first days of the course on food memoir. #POPC1

https://twitter.com/EmilyContois/status/1169592256392773632

{12} Here is another example of a class Twitter thread from our day on wine and spirit writing with students’ questions for all five of the authors we read that day. #POPC1

https://twitter.com/EmilyContois/status/1189137998866276352

{13} More logistics: I tweeted questions to authors on the morning of the day we read their work (& I sent reminders beforehand). They then responded before our afternoon class time. During class, we based our class discussion around the Twitter thread and responses. #POPC1

{14} I’ve pondered the connections between food media and popular culture pedagogy as I prepared for this conference. I would like to leave you with a couple questions, perhaps for us to discuss further. #POPC1

{15} Q1: How is learning in public part of the politics of popular culture pedagogy, or how could/should it be? #POPC1

{16} Q2: What are the opportunities (and risks) of our teaching and learning becoming part of popular culture via blogs, @Twitter, and @instagram? #POPC1

{17} If you’d like to learn more about my #foodxmedia course and students, I’m happy to share this recent @FOX23 news story on it! #POPC1

fox23.com/video?videoId=…

{18} You can also find out how this #foodxmedia course is related to my research agenda in this @utulsa news story. #POPC1

artsandsciences.utulsa.edu/emily-contois-…

{19, END} Thank you for reading my Twitter conference presentation, “Taking Food Media Public as Pop Culture Pedagogy.” I warmly welcome your comments and questions! #POPC1