As a third-year Ph.D. student in the English department, my research focuses on foodways, digital humanities, and theories of relationality, particularly from a rhetorical studies perspective. My project, “Drinking, Communing, Relating,” will produce a video essay in which I survey a history of U.S. bar culture and how COVID-19 has changed the way we drink, eat, and connect. Questions at the center of this project are: how do we relate? How does food and drink bring people together? What similarities are there between the table and digital spaces? What is relationship and relationality anyways? By exploring how food, drink, and digital mediums can build (or divide) community, I hope to add to pedagogies informed by relationship and relationality while contributing to a growing body of multimodal scholarship.
TIM ETZKORN
Ph.D. Candidate, English
