Sociology Professor Meredith Field cooks up a (huge) pot of soup for her First Year Experience course, The Sociology of Food

Alfred University Assistant Professor of Sociology Meredith Field grew up in rural Pennsylvania where annual harvest traditions formed a social anchor for community. She is exploring the sociology of those harvests in her First Year Experience class, The Sociology of Food, and she recently invited her students, Alfred University faculty and administrators, and friends in the larger Alfred community to an autumn cookout ("Soupstock 2025") in her Alfred village backyard - invoking some of the traditions of her youth.

The centerpiece of the cookout was a 22-gallon iron pot cast by her uncle at Williamsport Foundry Co and belonging to her grandfather. The pot was used during the annual pig harvest, fondly known to Field as 'butchering day,' and she is certain the spirit of generations of pig harvests reside within the iron - although the meal she cooked in the pot was a vegetable soup with a veggie broth.

"It was important to me to share this kettle with the students," Field says. "I want them to think about and appreciate the role of food in building community in multiple directions: reaching not only out into the surrounding community but also down through the generations. Community and tradition is what this pot represents for me."

Students respond enthusiastically to the convivial spirit. "It reminded me of how fun it is when food brings people together," says first-year student Rylee Greggains of Taberg, NY, who plans to major in biology - another division in Alfred University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which hosts Field's own Division of Social Sciences.

"It was a bonding experience with the professor and the class as a whole," adds Abigail Diotte of Richfield Springs. "Even though we had to be there at 8am - on a Saturday! - it was some of the most fun I've had with friends."

Field has hosted her soup party three times, including a party she organized in between the two years in which she taught food-focused courses for the FYE program. For her recent Soupstock, students spent hours cutting and prepping vegetables for 20-gallons of soup. They invited their own friends to the event, and Field also extended invitations to members of the Alfred Village Board, on which she serves as a trustee. Numerous dogs also attended, and the guests were asked to bring a side dish or a loaf of bread.

"It was a zoo," she says. "And the best kind."

While Field's hometown was a community largely of meat eaters, she chose a vegetable soup to accommodate the varied desires of her FYE class and the broader community. She and her students initially scoured vegetable soup recipes and settled on a recipe that included vegetable broth, onions, celery, carrots, bouillon cubes, tomatoes, green beans, corn, potatoes, fresh parsley, garlic, bay leaves, and pepper.

Directions: Bring water to a boil, add the ingredients in the proper order (so that none are overcooked), stir and cook for three to four hours over an open fire. Tend fire carefully.

Field has developed some informal metrics for determining the pedagogical impact of the cookout. "True success," she says, "is gauged by comparing how students are behaving at the beginning of the party versus at the end. In the most recent cookout, students were awkward at first, gathering in their different groups - the fire crew, the soup prep crew, etcetera. But by the end, they were all standing in a circle and laughing."

"These are first-semester students," she adds. "That's one of the main purposes of Alfred's First Year Experience class: to building community." The Monday following the cookout, the students discussed the various roles food played at the event - sharing tradition and culture, celebrating a birthday, and bringing people together, to name a few. "I want them to understand that food has many important sociocultural values beyond nourishment," Field says.