Beans Give Back 1.0 (APA4101.01)

Alexis Elton

Beans have a long shelf life packed with nutrition. How could this food source extend itself to the local community? Beans are a legume coming from the French word légume and the Latin word leger meaning to gather or to pick. With a cultural significance across several continents, beans have nourished humans, animals and soil health. This course will map multiple varieties of  beans based on cultural origins to those that enter this course, looking at stories, myths, family recipes, cooking methods to growing conditions of specific beans from student lineage. This mapping will provide a foundation from the global, to personal connection into the ethnography of beans. Within the harvest season we will consider community engagement between local bean growers and how the future of beans can reach further into the community as a form of placemaking, looking at the hyper local and imagined beans that could become a food staple to local communities. Projects will be designed by students based on mapping beans both individually and collectively. 

 


Learning Outcomes:
Cultivating collective thinking
Self designed research projects and executing process driven project
Navigating creating relationships with in the community
Conceptualizing ideas of future foodways of dried beans
Place making through food



Delivery Method: Fully in-person
Prerequisites: At least one CAPA course (Environment / Food) food related course OR permission by the instructor. Reach to instructor via email (alexiselton@bennington.edu) to schedule an interview.
Course Level: 4000-level
Credits: 4
F 8:30AM - 12:10PM (Full-term)
Maximum Enrollment: 12
Course Frequency: One time only

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