So much of higher education is just stupid now. How does this count as the pursuit of scholarship?
Campus Reform reports:
What’s on the menu at Boston University? ‘Queer Food’ backed by $350 million in federal fundingOne might assume “queer food” refers to donuts, bananas, or sausages. At Boston University, the term is the subject of a course offered to undergraduates.In a course titled Food, Gender, and Sexuality, Professor Megan Elias encourages students to move past nutrition and instead interpret meals as expressions of gender identity, sexual orientation, and relationship structures, including non-binary or polyamorous identities. The class frames everyday choices at the dining table as part of a larger effort to “recognize” identity and challenge traditional assumptions about family roles and social norms.Elias has expanded these ideas beyond the classroom. She is a co-author of Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food (with Recipes), a book that analyzes how food can be used to question gender hierarchies and social expectations. In university-produced videos and campus features, Elias emphasizes that queer food is not something to be strictly defined, but something to be acknowledged as part of a broader gender experience.In a Boston University YouTube video from the university’s Faculty Angle series, Elias says she is “not interested in making a definition of queer food, but a recognition,” adding that “queer food has always been” and that “queer people have always been cooking.” She asks students questions like, “How is your food choice representing your gender identity?” and “How is that different if you’re non-binary? … if you’re polyamorous?” She concludes, “We use food to understand the bigger picture of human experience.”The course encourages students to examine familiar ideas about cooking and family dynamics through this same lens. In a YouTube video, Elias says that the way people think about food and preparation “tends to get entangled with gender norms,” and uses the example of “mom’s home cooking” to illustrate how certain assumptions about who cooks can leave out other types of households, encouraging students to consider the “range of people involved in home cooking.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY