On the last day of April, a crowd of students gathered under a large white tent on the Horseshoe, the historic green at the center of the University of South Carolina campus. They were celebrating the end of an arduous semester with plates full of chopped brisket and mustard-sauced pork along with beans, mac and cheese, and slaw.
The young scholars had just completed Southern Studies 350, “Barbecue: Southern History and Culture on a Plate.” The course catalog describes SOST 350 as “an examination of barbecue as a historical, sociological, and cultural phenomenon in the South,” and I can’t think of a tastier way to tackle such topics.
It’s the second year that the class has been offered, and it’s taught by Matthew Simmons, a Senior Instructor at the Institute for Southern Studies. The students, though, come from a wide range of majors and backgrounds. “It’s a representative sample of campus, more or less,” Simmons says…