Research Project Assignment: Food and Geography

Introduction: For this project, you'll choose a food, such as pizza, or a cuisine, such as Italian cuisine, and then research how four geographic concepts are related to and affect your choice. Instead of presenting your research as a traditional paper, you'll use PowerPoint or similar presentation software to create an illustrated paper. Your presentation will be structured like a paper, including a title, introduction to the topic, main body, summary and conclusions, and references. Creative use of properly cited graphics and photos from the Internet relevant to your topic is required. This research assignment is designed to challenge you to be creative as well as demonstrate subject matter knowledge. You are also challenged to learn a new skill/practice an existing skill in applying PowerPoint (or OpenOffice) software to your research. You will not find the "answer" for this assignment in the text or any other single location - this is an integrative assignment that requires you, the student, to create your presentation template and apply your own knowledge on the assigned topic.

Instructions: You MUST stick to the topic - projects turned in that are not on the topic will not be considered for grading. Focus on geography. Do not focus entirely on history or general facts/trivia. First, choose a food item or cuisine that interests you. Some will have more information available about them than others, so it's worth doing some investigation before you settle on one. In general, any well known national cuisine will have adequate information available, as will widespread food items like hamburgers, pizza, and sushi. If you're not sure if your desired topic is appropriate, please feel free to ask! Once you have selected your topic, you will then do research to see how each of the following geographic concepts affects or is related to your topic:

1. Regions

2. Cultural Landscape

3. Diffusion

4. Distance decay

Distance decay refers to the fact that influence and interaction between locations decreases as the distance between them increases. As such, it has a significant influence on how things change as they diffuse away from their point of origin. Be sure to address these specific geographic terms and concepts. You don't need to address them in this order, but you do need to address all of them. You should use "subsets" of these definitions (e.g. contagious diffusion) if such subsets exist. Be sure to refer to your text and other reliable resources to ensure you completely understand these concepts. You should be detailed in your treatment of these concepts - for instance, you should explain both how and why your choice varies by region, and how and why it has been affected by distance decay. Remember that geography, as an academic discipline, seeks to explain why things vary from place to place, not just describe how they do. Your illustrated paper should be 12 to 15 slides long. You should include a title, an introduction to the topic, a main body that covers how the four geographic concepts relate to your topic, a summary, conclusion, and reference list. You should cite your sources using the citation style appropriate for your field. If you're not sure what that is, use APA style citations. You should use the Notes section of the presentation to include image citations or URLs with the slides on which the images appear. Do not include recipes, cooking instructions, or lists of ingredients. These are not relevant to a geographic report.