As I reach the end of week five and look back on the first half of my final ILC, I am amazed by how time has flown and how much I can learn and grow with my academics over such a short period of time. I began this project with much trepidation, I was scared of how others would perceive me studying such a topic, nervous that I would run out of content to explore, and overall unsure if I was in a place academically where I could take on a project, one that required myself to fill in the gaps and rely heavily on my own interpretations and conclusions rather than results of a study. These fears proved to be for nothing, as each aspect of my project thus far has contributed to an overall collection of personal explorations that are the definition of academic success.
So far I have utilized academic papers, journals and books, religious texts, as well as paintings, sculptures, poems, and novels. Standouts include the chapter “Sex” by Angela Mea from Food Words: Essays in Culinary Culture by Peter Jackson, the sculpture My Nurse by Meret Oppenheim, the poem Tomatoes by Stephen Dobyns, “A Lesbian Appetite” by Dorothy Allison, a chapter from Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking edited by Arlene Voski Avakian, and my exploration of the Song of Solomon from the Old Testament. Throughout every week of content I have come across the same concept in different forms, that of cooking as an act of foreplay. I am curious to continue this quarter exploring where the foreplay and seductions comes into play, is it the food, the kitchen, the subject, or the connection between all three that entices the fourth, the luster?
While I am bittersweet that this is my final project as a student of Sarah Williams, I am unashamedly excited to close out my academic career with a project of this caliber.