Writing Food

Taught by: Dr Hannah Smith-Drelich

Reviews

AY 25/26, Sem 1

Content (Structure/Organization): 

The first half was sociology and anthropology based, and the readings were quite dense. However, the class discussions zoomed in on application to Singaporean food culture. The second half was literature based, which is very similar to NGN. While the page counts for readings were a lot higher, they were much easier to read, and also quite enjoyable. The discussions were free-flowing and tended to cover a lot less content than the assigned readings. 

Manageability of Workload: 

There were 3 assignments: 

1) Thick description- visiting a hawker centre and observing the activity there, analysing it from an anthropological perspective

2) Close reading- similar to NGN, constructing a thesis and writing a short essay that addresses a question about a chapter/text as a whole

3) Creative assignment- writing a short story about a food-related experience in our own lives 

While I found the workload to be low compared to other NUSC mods, I still invested quite a lot of time and effort into the essays. On non-submission weeks, I spent no more than 2 hours on the readings, but for the assignments, I spent a few days working on each essay. 

Ease/Difficulty of Attaining Grades:

From my experience, Prof Hannah's marking was quite balanced as she pointed out strengths and weaknesses equally. She always gave really detailed feedback- she annotated my essays with specific comments and also wrote a few paragraphs of general feedback. She was always clear with her explanations on how I could improve.

Learning Value/Recommendation: 

This course definitely gave me more perspective about food choices that I took for granted and enriched my skills in storytelling. 

About the Instructor:

Prof Hannah always made class discussions really lively and engaging - it was very hard to lose focus during classes! She started the lessons with slideshows about the author and historical context, which were really useful in helping us understand the texts as a whole. She welcomed everyone's perspectives, even if they were different from hers. She was approachable and open to questions after class and consults. 

Additional Comments/Word of Advice:

Even though the prerequisites technically say that you only need to have cleared NTW before signing up, I would strongly recommend only doing it once you complete NGN, otherwise you might struggle a lot.

AY 23/24, Sem 2

Name: Ryan Tan (@rnthbmax)

Content (Structure/Organization): 5

This class is under the discipline of Food Studies, which can be considered an offshoot of anthropology (and a bit of literature) with an obvious focus on food as an area of research.

The structure of the course is very well defined and communicated to the class during the first lesson. Each week would cover a different text that relates to food. The first 4-5 weeks focused on an anthropological view of studying food. The rest of the weeks were a literary study on food. Texts for the initial weeks range from academic essays to anthro studies, texts for the literary portion are a collections of prose and short stories.

Accessibility and Assessment: 3

The class is fairly accessible in the sense that you don't really have to learn and memorise complicated topics, many students joined the class just because they considered themselves ""foodies"" and the residual interest carried them through. 

Although, some of the texts that Prof uses are a bit dense and hard to wrap your head around, but honestly nothing a good AI summariser can't bring you up to speed with.

Manageability of Workload: 4

Readings could be considered intense if you aren't a humanities major. On average 30-40 pages of reading a week (this can vary from way less to way more). But, there aren't other requirements for class other than being vaguely familiar with the texts for the week, to be able to be productive during discussions.

Assignments: 1 Close Analysis, 1 Creative Project + Field Study. 1 Final Project (Either creative writing or close analysis)

Assignment-wise, there is a good mix of creative writing projects and textual close analysis. The creative writing projects are a breath of fresh air because prof is pretty chill with letting you write whatever you want, as long as it's within her stipulations.

There is also a field-study component that is linked to one of your creative writing projects. You have to go out to a food court and be a sociologist for the day to find interesting phenomena to write about.

Ease/Difficulty of Attaining Grades:

I don't really have a metric for this. Personally, I got an A for the course, but I come from a Literature background which made a lot of the course's content and assignments fairly simple. Imo, the assignments are all very simple, and if you are comfortable with writing, pretty fun! Those who are not too familiar with textual analysis or creative writing may struggle. But, prof is very open for consultations and helping you out if you need, so I think it isn't too hard to do passably well in this course.

Learning Value/Recommendation: 4

It was a really useful and enlightening mod. It's fun to look at food from an academic pov, but the relative mundanity of the topic kept things light hearted and breezy. 

About the Instructor:

Prof Smith-Drelich is delightful to learn under! She has a lot of passion for the subject, and is fun and engaging during classes. She is receptive to questions and slows down when dealing with more complex topics. As mentioned before, prof is also open to consultations, and they can be very helpful in catching up if need be. To be honest, at times she can be a bit intimidating as she tends to have strong opinions on things like writing and academics, but she means well! 

Additional Comments/Word of Advice:

In terms of the course's content, I expect prof to change the texts as she's still trying to figure out what works best for the NUSC student body, as my class was her first time teaching this course in NUS. So the syllabus and course content may experience some minor changes here and there from the time of this review.