ethnographical carleton cheese (2022). various cheeses from the Carleton College dining halls.

Inspired by G.K. Chesterton’s essay on Cheese in his collection Alarms and Discursions, I created an ‘ethnographical cheese’ for my college by melting down every kind of cheese in the dining halls into a cheese wheel mould I made, stamped with the college logo. I left it unattended for a few weeks until it grew a respectable amount of mould, then walked around campus offering it to students to try. Seven students tried the cheese, and attested that it tasted just like normal cheese. I imagine they’d been desensitised by the poor quality of dining hall food they’d grown used to. I did not try the mouldy cheese myself.