Prose & Pasta: Food Writing and Culinary Tourism in Perugia

Spend three immersive weeks with Drs. Jennifer and Andrew Cognard Black (aka, the CBs) at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy, exploring how food is not simply sustenance or pleasure but a cultural symbol--one shaped by tourism, history, and the environment. This course invites students to engage food writing at the intersections of appetite and analysis, approaching their writing through the complex lens of the culinary tourist. Even more, as interdisciplinary study tour, the CBs ask students to draw on literary, sociological, environmental, anthropological, and gender studies as they consider the pleasures and ethics of food tourism.

Through writing workshops, a market visit, a cooking and tasting experience with a local chef, tours of a local farm (Orsini) and a vineyard (Terre Margarietlli), and a conversation with Domenico Lizzi of Fuori di Zucca (a local initiative bringing small food producers and consumers together), participants will examine tensions between authenticity and performance, local identity and international desire, and how culinary tourism shapes how Americans experience the Italian landscape, its citizens, and its culture. Central questions for the class will include: How are narratives about culinary traditions produced? What happens when regional food producers become tourist destinations? And how do tourists walk the line between cultural appropriation and genuine experience?

Students will produce pieces of food writing that evoke the senses and spark original inquiry. These writings will include poems, essays, and short fiction that situate the foods of Italy within broader economic, environmental, and cultural frameworks. By the end of this study tour, participants will have sparked their culinary imaginations and honed their food writing skills, while also developing a more critical and nuanced understanding of what it means to consume—and to represent—both place and self through food.

Jennifer Cognard-Black (JCB), Professor of English, and Andrew Cognard-Black (ACB), Associate Professor of Sociology, bring 20 years of experience leading students abroad on study tours to Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and Alba, Italy. Both have also lived and taught internationally, including in England, Scotland, Italy, Slovenia, and the Netherlands. Their new tour, Prose & Pasta, invites participants to explore Italian food through the complex lens of food tourism, drawing on their complementary expertise. For two decades, JCB has taught courses in food literature, food writing, and food and social justice and has published extensively in Food Studies, including two books, an Audible Original, and most recently the anthology Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically (NYU Press, 2024). ACB, Chair of the Sociology-Anthropology Department, specializes in social stratification, race and ethnicity, and family—all fields that illuminate familial foodways and food inequality. He is also a leading scholar of honors education and editor of The Demonstrable Value of Honors Education (NCHC, 2019). Known affectionately as “the CBs” by their study-abroad cohorts, they delight in sharing international education with students and look forward to exploring Perugia, its food, and its culture of tourism together.

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