UT Students Trace Food Roots Beyond Farm to Table

The clinking of glasses and din of diners chatting over their Cuban sandwiches provided the backdrop for Kacy Tillman’s students as they snaked through the Columbia Restaurant’s colorful tile-covered walls, learning of the Ybor City establishment’s more than 100-year-old history from one of its family leaders, Cesar Gonzmart Jr.

“The old tiles on the floor come from Cuba, the tiles on the wall from Spain — everything on the walls has history and meaning,” Gonzmart said.

From the lead-glass windows to the wrought iron doorframes, the restaurant’s beauty wasn’t lost on the ogling students.

“I want to live in this restaurant,” said Mia Meo ’16, an education major from New Jersey, as she climbed the stairs to the second floor dining rooms and overlooking balconies.

The group of about 10 students were there as part of Tillman’s Foodways class, a May Term course examining “the intersection of food, literature, history and culture, which means it concerns the way food is represented, manipulated, sold, eaten, cooked, distributed, marketed, grown and discussed,” Tillman defines in the course syllabus.

A hybrid class bridging face-to-face meetings with online experiences, LIT 273 Foodways: Literature, Food and Culture, is based on experiential learning, where much of the course takes place in kitchens, grocery stores and farms.

“Picking this course has truly led to one of my most memorable classes at UT,” said Morgan Bachrodt ’17. “I love cooking, and I love truly letting the ingredients in my recipes shine. This class has taught me so much about where those ingredients come from.”

The students studied early American vegetarians through the writing of Ben Franklin, examined feminism, fat shaming and body image and volunteered at the Centre for Girls. They tested their food literacy with grocery store studies and researched food insecurity and helped serve lunch to the homeless at Metropolitan Ministries. They also talked with Laura Reiley, the Tampa Bay Times food critic who recently published, “Farm to Fable,” and discussed the locavore movement.

“I learned how virtue can be attained by avoiding the indulgence of food. I never would have associated what you eat impacting who you are,” said Nejat Nassir ’19, a nursing major. “Benjamin Franklin is a prime example of someone who practiced temperance and vegetarianism. He wanted others to propagate the idea that an unpolluted diet causes an unpolluted body, which allows a clear mind and moral improvement in one’s life.”

This is the second time Tillman has offered this course — the first was back in 2013. The focus this year is on the foundations of American foodways versus 21st-century concerns.

“I wanted students to know the origins of the debates they were studying. Vegetarianism, veganism, activism-through-food is nothing new,” said Tillman, an early Americanist interested in 18th century food and culture. “The most successful lessons of the last class were those that focused on food activism, so I also changed a lot of the course to talk about how food has served as a platform for social justice. Nineteenth-century feminists used the issue of temperance to argue for suffrage. Some of the first sit-ins during the Civil Rights Era were in lunchrooms. Ben Franklin's idea for the new nation began with a book he read on vegetarianism. So, unlike last time, we have spent the first week studying those early origins of food, national identity and reform.”

At the end of the two weeks, Tillman said she hopes students walk away with an ability to think deliberately about the food they eat, where it comes from and who is involved in the process.

“I hope that students are able to think critically about the rhetoric surrounding the way food is grown, manufactured, legislated, regulated and justified. I hope they become analytical thinkers, not only about the food they eat, but about the narratives sold to them in grocery stores, advertisements, TV shows, magazines and all other forms of media,” Tillman said. “And I hope that allows them to make conscious decisions that improve the quality of their lives and those around them.”

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