You’ll want to go back to school with this news. The University of Kentucky is offering an undergraduate class called “Taco Literacy: Public Advocacy and Mexican Food in the US South” this semester—and it sounds like a delicious way to learn.
Munchies chatted with the course’s head honcho Steven Alvarez, who’s an assistant professor in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies department at UK. Students obviously flocked to the class, because you know, tacos, with more signing up for the course than were needed. According to Munchies, Alvarez was inspired to teach the course by his involvement with the Southern Foodways Alliance. He realized the importance of food after going to one of its symposiums and he was amazed by the oral histories of food he heard.
An essential part of the course is that students eat food in the area known as “Mexington,” which Alvarez said is “the barrio of Lexington.” They’re supposed to Instagram their taco tours, so naturally I went through them to drool over some authentic Mexican food.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBEIXsVHXcp/
Required readings for the course include Tortillas: A Cultural History, Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food, Tacopedia, and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. (All great reads since they’re all about Mexican food.)
If you’re hungry to learn with the rest of the class, you can check out its website. According to the class’s introduction, by the end of the semester “students will be generators of knowledge, have a portfolio full of multimedia food journalism, and they will be over the fajita stage of Mexican food.”
They’ll have full portfolios and hopefully full stomachs as well. Now somebody pass me the hot sauce.
H/T Munchies | Photo via saechang/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)
