ESP Biography

KFC's chicken pot pie is made from more than 100 ingredients, including Tricalcium Phosphate, sodium chloride, and something called "dough conditioner." The average American meal travels 1500 miles from farm to table. Starbuck's mocha cookie crumble frappucino contains 105 grams of sugar. Experts now worry that bananas are going extinct. The Federal Food and Drug Administration regulates the labeling of "organic" food -- but similar terms such as "natural" and "healthy" are vague and can be misleading. What's going on with American food? Where does it come from and what is it made of? And, if we don't know, how can we find out? This short class will introduce students to the fiction of nutrition. We will learn how to decode an ingredient list for common household foods and read labels carefully. We will take a rhetorical approach to food, food labels, and packaging. We will also look closely at our own food stories by investigating the blurry lines between science and story in modern American food.

KFC's chicken pot pie is made from more than 100 ingredients, including Tricalcium Phosphate, sodium chloride, and something called "dough conditioner." The average American meal travels 1500 miles from farm to table. Starbuck's mocha cookie crumble frappucino contains 105 grams of sugar. Experts now worry that bananas are going extinct. The Federal Food and Drug Administration regulates the labeling of "organic" food -- but similar terms such as "natural" and "healthy" are vague and can be misleading. What's going on with American food? Where does it come from and what is it made of? And, if we don't know, how can we find out? This short class will introduce students to the fiction of nutrition. We will learn how to decode an ingredient list for common household foods and read labels carefully. We will take a rhetorical approach to food, food labels, and packaging. We will also look closely at our own food stories by investigating the blurry lines between science and story in modern American food.

In this short course, you will write two poems in half an hour! We will first study perspective in poetry and then apply these ideas to two poems, each written from a different point of view.