Student Success

Students Incorporate Peers and Community for BBQ Culture Class
"I designed the Texas BBQ course to be an immersive research experience in which students explore the development of a regional 'taste,' a distinctive set of cultural, social, and economical practices related to the production, preparation, and consumption of food. As in a traditional senior seminar in English, students read widely in barbeque literature, including culinary histories, anthropology, historical cookbooks, satirical literature and cartooning, work in archives, including the new Prison Rodeo and Walker County Fairgrounds Association archives in the Newton Gresham Library, and produce both written and oral presentations on their findings. In this community-engaged course, they also interview local pit-masters, grocers, competitive barbeque teams, and others working in the world of Texas BBQ today. They visit historic places in Texas BBQ history and BBQ joints ranked among the best in Texas by Texas Monthly. They serve as judges in the annual Walker County BBQ Cookoff and then host their own mini-cookoff in which they compete against each other under the supervision of experienced SHSU alumni cooks. In doing so, they connect academic studies in Humanities to public life as it is experienced in the present through a series of highly relevant projects. Having gathered stories and historical documents, photos and film footage, recipes and cooking experience, students produce short videos about thier experiences over the fifteen weeks, which tell the story not of Texas BBQ but of their personal transformation through this cultural and social engagement." - Dr. Michael Demson