From a program devoted to intellectual enrichment through the exchange of scholarly learning comes a more corporeal route to knowledge: Putting one’s senses, especially those employed in the enjoyment of food and drink, to pleasurable use.

Lee UptonThe Sweet Briar Honors Program will host a lecture by literary critic and Pushcart Prize-winning poet Lee Upton at its next colloquium at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in the Wailes Lounge at the Elston Inn.

Keeping with this year’s Honors Colloquia theme of “The Senses,” the evening will be a tribute to the culinary memoirist and self-described voluptuary Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. It will begin with Upton’s talk, “Returning to Her Senses: The Imagination of M.F.K. Fisher.”

A food and wine tasting will follow. Charlottesville-area chef Paul Deigl will prepare the selections, which were inspired by some of Fisher’s favorite dishes.

Deigl’s tasting menu will include smoked trout canapes with aioli and dill; stuffed oysters; cheeses including Camembert, Gorgonzola, and Everona – a hard cheese made from sheep’s milk by a local producer in Rapidan, Va.; raspberries Romanoff; cream puffs with whipped cream; and two surprise dishes.

Upton, an English professor and writer-in-residence at Lafayette College, wrote an essay, “Eating Our Way Toward Wisdom: M.F.K. Fisher’s Oysters.” In it she follows a thread through Fisher’s own prolific and provocative writings on the nature of food, pleasure and social gender expectations.

“For Fisher, wisdom may be gained through pleasure; we may taste our way toward knowledge,” Upton wrote in the essay.

Alice McLean, a postdoctoral fellow in Sweet Briar’s honors program who wrote her dissertation on Fisher, invited Upton to participate in the colloquia. McLean calls Upton’s essay the “most insightful and elegant scholarship to date on Fisher.”

Fisher, who began writing in the 1930s, pioneered a form of culinary memoir that celebrates female pleasure, McLean said, noting that it was radical for its time.

“Before Fisher, women wrote about how to cook for others, never about how to feed themselves.”

Upton, who has written four books of poetry and four books of literary criticism, is the winner of numerous prizes for her poetry. Her fiction has appeared in literary reviews and journals. A fifth book of poems, “Undid in the Land of Undone,” will be published this year.

“I’m delighted that Upton could help us pay tribute to Fisher,” McLean said. “A poet speaking about food and pleasure followed by a tasting can’t help but make for a fun evening.”

All members of the College community are invited to the event, although seating is limited. Those who wish to attend should contact Julie Hemstreet in the Honors Program, jhemstreet@sbc.edu, to reserve space.

This event is co-sponsored by the College Lectures and Events Committee.

– By Jennifer McManamay, SBC staff writer