Justin Stec
Postdoctoral Fellow
As an educator in the Engagements Curriculum, I aim to help students appreciate, understand, and critically reflect upon how our engagements with art shape our ways of thinking (cognition) and feeling (emotion) and how our ways of thinking and feeling shape our engagements with art across diverse mediums, but especially through food. As a neurodivergent person, I value unconventional modes of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and engaging with art and this reflects in my teaching methods. My food-focused courses teach students how to talk about the aesthetic dimensions of cooking and eating with others. Students might analyze recipes or restaurant dishes, deconstruct the creative choices made by the chef, and discuss how those elements evoke specific thoughts, feelings, and modes of thinking. Other activities might include collaborative projects like creating a menu, compiling an autobiographical recipe collection, and in-class “sense-testing” experiences. As an academic, I pursue my interest in art, cognition, and emotion in the study of poetry. Outside of work, I enjoy cooking, playing music, writing poetry, and spending time with my partner and our dog, Puck.