Teaching with Microbes: Lessons from Fermentation during a Pandemic

ABSTRACT The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic introduced unique challenges to teaching at the university level, while also heightening awareness of existing social and health disparities as these shaped interactions and influenced learning outcomes in class settings. Based on ethnographic and autoethnographic data, this article reflects on teaching about human-microbial relations in the context of the course “Anthropology of Food” and specifically at the start of the pandemic. Data demonstrate how students shifted from demystifying microbes to distrusting microbes to reacquainting with microbes through a hands-on experiment with fermentation. The article introduces a microbiopolitical perspective in interpreting students' learning trajectories and ultimate course outcomes. IMPORTANCE As evidenced by classroom experiences in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, microbes are “good to teach with” not only within microbiology and related fields but across a variety of academic disciplines. Thinking with microbes is not a neutral process but one shaped by social, political, and economic processes. Imploring students to contemplate how power dynamics and patterns of inequality are detectable at the microbial level may offer a unique opportunity for transforming one’s view of the world and our relatedness with both humans and nonhumans.

The reviewers and I agree that this is a well-written and intriguing piece, which provides interesting perspective on the pandemic and human interactions with microbes. A few minor suggestions have been made to clarify some aspects of the language.
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The ASM Journals program strives for constant improvement in our submission and publication process. Please tell us how we can improve your experience by taking this quick Author Survey. This is a creative and pedagogically sophisticated approach to teaching and thinking with microbes. The paper builds on rigorous research and provides insightful ways to bridge the gap between research and teaching. Most importantly, the author ensures the readers understand that thinking with microbes is not a neutral process but one shaped by social, political and economic processes. A really incredible contribution. I can see this paper having a great impact.

Reviewer #2 (Comments for the Author):
This is an outstanding article, with broad relevance for teaching in the pandemic and postpandemic era. It uses the topic of microbes to shed light on both an effective teaching strategy and broader dynamics of power in the food system and beyond. The concept of "Microbiopolitical Pedagogies" is indeed "good to think with;" readers, whether they are students or professors, will find this article's exploration of how one classroom adjusted to feeding, cooking, and teaching during covid thought-provoking and inspiring. I have a few small comments, which I make in the hope of improving an already impressive text. 1) I think it might be useful to clarify in the first paragraph of the section "the first 8 weeks" that this happened before the pandemic. While careful readers will know this, at first I did not realize that this was documenting pre-pandemic erateaching. This explanation would also be helpful for readers who are not on the US semester system, who might not be familiar with a typical semester timeline. 2) Also, I wondered if the pandemic was on students' minds and part of the discussion before the WHO declaration, or if students were largely unaware? (For example, I had a Chinese student in my spring term class who began to live in lockdown in January because she was following international news. Had students already begun to change their lives before the break and might these changes have impacted the class?). As currently written, it seems that the pandemic appeared over spring break, and a bit of foreshadowing what students were thinking in the classroom in the weeks leading up to the change to online education --and all that was to come --might be helpful. 3) As a final suggestion, I think it might be useful to tease apart the relations between microbes and viruses slightly more (the paper suggests that students went from being accepting to becoming fearful of microbes. But covid is a virus, not a microbe. Did they understand this distinction? What did they make of it? Those suggestions aside, I learned a lot about effective classroom instruction during covid from this article.

Reviewer #1 (Comments for the Author):
This is a creative and pedagogically sophisticated approach to teaching and thinking with microbes. The paper builds on rigorous research and provides insightful ways to bridge the gap between research and teaching. Most importantly, the author ensures the readers understand that thinking with microbes is not a neutral process but one shaped by social, political and economic processes. A really incredible contribution. I can see this paper having a great impact.
Thank you for this positive feedback.

Reviewer #2 (Comments for the Author):
This is an outstanding article, with broad relevance for teaching in the pandemic and post-pandemic era. It uses the topic of microbes to shed light on both an effective teaching strategy and broader dynamics of power in the food system and beyond. The concept of "Microbiopolitical Pedagogies" is indeed "good to think with;" readers, whether they are students or professors, will find this article's exploration of how one classroom adjusted to feeding, cooking, and teaching during covid thought-provoking and inspiring. I have a few small comments, which I make in the hope of improving an already impressive text. 1) I think it might be useful to clarify in the first paragraph of the section "the first 8 weeks" that this happened before the pandemic. While careful readers will know this, at first I did not realize that this was documenting pre-pandemic era-teaching. This explanation would also be helpful for readers who are not on the US semester system, who might not be familiar with a typical semester timeline. This is a wonderful suggestion and I added a few words at the start of this section to clarify that it was leading up to the pandemic.
2) Also, I wondered if the pandemic was on students' minds and part of the discussion before the WHO declaration, or if students were largely unaware? (For example, I had a Chinese student in my spring term class who began to live in lockdown in January because she was following international news. Had students already begun to change their lives before the break and might these changes have impacted the class?). As currently written, it seems that the pandemic appeared over spring break, and a bit of foreshadowing what students were thinking in the classroom in the weeks leading up to the change to online education --and all that was to come --might be helpful.
Another excellent suggestion. I added a paragraph at the end of this section that addresses these questions.
3) As a final suggestion, I think it might be useful to tease apart the relations between microbes and viruses slightly more (the paper suggests that students went from being accepting to becoming fearful of microbes. But covid is a virus, not a microbe. Did they understand this distinction? What did they make of it? Those suggestions aside, I learned a lot about effective classroom instruction during covid from this article.
I added a couple of clauses to when first discussing the transition to "microbes as foe" to touch on this important point. Your manuscript has been accepted, and I am forwarding it to the ASM Journals Department for publication. For your reference, ASM Journals' address is given below. Before it can be scheduled for publication, your manuscript will be checked by the mSystems senior production editor, Ellie Ghatineh, to make sure that all elements meet the technical requirements for publication. She will contact you if anything needs to be revised before copyediting and production can begin. Otherwise, you will be notified when your proofs are ready to be viewed.
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