Food Identity and its Impact Upon the Study Abroad Experience

Study Abroad programs go to great lengths to prepare students for living and working in environments unlike their own. While much of the preparation focuses on the challenges of university life, travel, safety and the like, this paper suggests that an early and thoughtful discussion of “food identity” will provide students with the tools necessary to become more insightful of the culture of their host country. Since eating is vital, regional foods provide a wonderful opportunity for entering into the culture of another. By exposing students to such factors as the malleable, political, gendered and deliberately constructed nature of food identities, students become more cognizant of the complex histories of other people and places, through the portal of their food

Machiavelli and the Role of Fortune in Emanuele Crialese\u27s The Golden Door

During the summer of 2007, Emanuele Crialese\u27s film The Golden Door played in American theatres to much acclaim from critics. This provocative film on Italian immigration defies many of the clichéd and romantic notions many Americans have towards their immigrant origins. Crialese instead tells an almost fantastic story of poverty, ignorance, brutality, and promise through visual imagery that unsettles yet inspires the viewer. The Golden Door lets us in to a world which many critics have likened to a Fellini portal of unforgettable characters and themes. As apolitical theorist, however, I cannot help but see this film as a portal into Machiavelli\u27s mind and, in particular, his understanding of human nature and fortune. In this article, I examine how each of the main characters succeeds or fails to handle the challenges of the new world in accordance to Machiavelli\u27s understanding of how well man adapts his nature to changing circumstances. In the end, the goal is to show the lasting significance of Machiavelli\u27s teachings to the modern world, especially his wisdom regarding human nature

Learning the Food System: Experience and Empowerment

Professors Amy Guptill, PhD, and Andrea Ciliotta-Rubery, PhD, together with students, will reflect on their experiences with a 2015 summer field course entitled The Food System: Community and Politics. Students from the course will share their insights on how food-related policies empower and disempower community groups, while both students and faculty members will discuss what they have learned from the field course about personal empowerment and social connection through experiential learning

The Pedagogical Value of Polling: A Coordinated 2012 Exit Poll Project across Diverse Classrooms

Several previous studies have demonstrated that student exit polling has educational value and promotes civic engagement (Berry and Robinson 2012, Evans and Lagergren 2007, Lelieveldt and Rossen 2009, and others). The authors of this paper have created assignments and an instructor\u27s manual on running student exit polls in undergraduate courses. Three institutions used these assignments during the fall 2012 semester. Working together, these instructors created an opportunity for their students to participate collaboratively with others in survey design and data analysis. This effort further provided assessment data on the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach for student engagement outside of the classroom in different communities and course contexts. Student surveys measured the impact that this experience had on their understanding of their own community, their relationship to the national community, their understanding of survey methodology, and descriptive statistics. Do students learn more about their community or the scientific process? Does it matter whether the course is designed primarily around politics, statistics, or public opinion? This paper addresses these questions and how these effects vary across different types of students and classrooms