In the fall of 2017, I created a collaborative Instagram project on Donuts and Poetry. After taking a picture of a donut, the collaborator would write a poem about their experience eating the donut. With this project, I aimed to get people thinking and writing about their food, and demonstrate how much there it to learn from all foods, including the historic and much maligned donut.
Further Reading:
This project was inspired by the article, “Eddie Shack was No Tim Horton: Donuts and Folklore of Mass Culture in Canada” by Steve Penfold. It opened my eyes to the power of studying a single food object. Here’s the full citation:
Penfold, Steve 2002. “Eddie Shack was No Tim Horton: Donuts and the Folklore of Mass Culture in Canada” in Food Nations, Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. Belasco, Warren and Philip Scranton, Eds., New York: Routledge, pp. 48-65.
Paul R. Mullin’s Glazed America is an excellent micro-history of this donut in the United States.
Ariana Gunderson 