During my sophomore fall, my friend and I worked together to prepare readings, discussions, writing exercises, and assignments for our student forum in the spring. My friend was inspired by a course she took on East Asian cuisine and reached out to me because I had taken a class on the US Empire in the Transpacific. Her knowledge of food studies in East Asia and my knowledge of histories and approaches concerning the Asian diaspora in America would complement each other in creating and teaching this student forum. We prepared email proposals to the College of East Asian Studies Chair, Professor Watanabe, to ask him to be our sponsor for the forum. We also created the following curriculum: 

Syllabus: 

Copy-of-Syllabus-Planning-ver

After receiving the Chair of the College of East Asian Studies’ agreement to be our forum advisor and additional feedback on improving the format and readings for the course, we were ready to go! 

In the spring, we alternated leading class discussions and created a small community of students interested in studying the gastrodiplomacy of diasporic cuisines. This forum culminated in a student conference in which everyone presented their final projects. For the student conference, I was tasked with finding and securing a keynote speaker. After browsing LinkedIn and reaching out to a few alumni, I managed to successfully contact an alum who had written a doctoral dissertation on South Korea’s gastrodiplomacy. In addition to getting to know an impressive and humble Wesleyan alum, it was also rewarding to listen to her speak for our student forum. After the conclusion of the course, the work of the students in the forum was transferred to a website: Asian-American Foodways​ – Takeshi Watanabe 

Once again, I gained the confidence to lead and share discussion on topics of interest. Initially, it was intimidating to put myself out there, to lead my peers when I felt inadequate and not fully knowledgeable. However, through this experience of leading a student forum, I realized it is not about knowing everything. Rather, in the process of incorporating the thoughts and ideas of others, we build knowledge as a community and thus reinforce and improve our own.