Tres Hornos: Earthen Ovens and Foodways of the Southwest

• Fulfills the studio requirement for the Certificate in Urban Humanities

These graduate seminars, ranging across disciplines, bring collaborative approaches and team-teaching to graduate studies in the humanities. Teams include two faculty members from the Division of Arts & Humanities and one faculty member from an outside discipline. Seminars include up to eighteen graduate students from different disciplines. In the first half of the semester, explorations and readings are organized by the three faculty members. In the second half, the graduate students form small cohorts, each tasked with collaborating on a research paper, white paper, or conference panel related to a case study. Where possible, case studies engage outside experts such as editors, curators, and policy analysts.

This course centers on the design, construction, sustainable use, and experimental variables in archaeological feature visibility of a broadly used food technology, earthen ovens. Known as the horno in the US Southwest, this colonial introduction is the focus of our seminar, experimenting with construction techniques and using them to cook a variety of indigenous and introduced foods. Collaboratively-built hornos will be touchstones for exploring how cultural and historical tradition intersects with contemporary practice via 3D clay fabrication techniques and through the creative lens of installation, land art, and social practice. An attached small-scale garden project will provide a physical connection to ethnobotanical histories. Undergraduate and graduate students from across the university will work together to explore how the friction between empire and indigeneity can create both anxious and productive outcomes. Seminar participants will also participate in hands-on experiences building and cooking and examination of archaeological artifacts, among other learning modalities, to think about how colonial food practices shape(ed) contemporary ways of making, cooking, growing, and community building.

See course posting on Berkeley Academic Guide.