(Un)Supervised Critical Baking: Reflective Virtual Cheesecake Simulation
Proposal Type
Individual Talk
Location
Narratives & Worlds
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
Somewhere in the world, it’s 2:00 A.M. and an academic on a deadline is hunched over a standmixer instead of (or in addition to) paying for therapy. In a publish-or-perish world where faculty feel increasingly “supervised,” two unsupervised stressbakers share their interactive simulation with the help of Claude (and occasionally Copilot). This critical making (critical baking?) project brings together digital humanities scholarship and self/community care in the form of shared, distant cheesecake.
In our unsupervised moments, we often reflect on what drives us to persevere in academia, and the act of baking--having both hands and short-term memory occupied with a task we have done many times before--acts to free us from our stressors while tethering us to the activity of baking. By reassigning time from academic production to baking goods that we share with our communities is in itself a small act of resistance to the increasing supervision by various administrations. We call this stressbaking, and though few scholars have explored baking as a coping mechanism (Pitstick, 2021; Sofo et al., 2021), we see others across fields balancing stress by baking, crafting, and other tactile hobbies.
The critical making process included using Claude to create the simulation and replacing the generated "reflections" with the authors’ own thoughts. Despite not intending to supervise Claude’s generation of the simulation, the process actually required a surprising amount of supervision, redirection, and restarting. This presentation demonstrates the simulation, discusses the creation process, and shares insights around AI, creativity, and reflection.
References
Pitstick, E. (2021). Baking During COVID-19: Coping, Connecting, Creating. Student Scholarship. https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/studentscholarship/50
Sofo, A., Galluzzi, A., & Zito, F. (2021). A Modest Suggestion: Baking Using Sourdough - a Sustainable, Slow-Paced, Traditional and Beneficial Remedy against Stress during the Covid-19 Lockdown. Human Ecology, 49(1), 99–105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00219-y
(Un)Supervised Critical Baking: Reflective Virtual Cheesecake Simulation
Narratives & Worlds
Somewhere in the world, it’s 2:00 A.M. and an academic on a deadline is hunched over a standmixer instead of (or in addition to) paying for therapy. In a publish-or-perish world where faculty feel increasingly “supervised,” two unsupervised stressbakers share their interactive simulation with the help of Claude (and occasionally Copilot). This critical making (critical baking?) project brings together digital humanities scholarship and self/community care in the form of shared, distant cheesecake.
In our unsupervised moments, we often reflect on what drives us to persevere in academia, and the act of baking--having both hands and short-term memory occupied with a task we have done many times before--acts to free us from our stressors while tethering us to the activity of baking. By reassigning time from academic production to baking goods that we share with our communities is in itself a small act of resistance to the increasing supervision by various administrations. We call this stressbaking, and though few scholars have explored baking as a coping mechanism (Pitstick, 2021; Sofo et al., 2021), we see others across fields balancing stress by baking, crafting, and other tactile hobbies.
The critical making process included using Claude to create the simulation and replacing the generated "reflections" with the authors’ own thoughts. Despite not intending to supervise Claude’s generation of the simulation, the process actually required a surprising amount of supervision, redirection, and restarting. This presentation demonstrates the simulation, discusses the creation process, and shares insights around AI, creativity, and reflection.
References
Pitstick, E. (2021). Baking During COVID-19: Coping, Connecting, Creating. Student Scholarship. https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/studentscholarship/50
Sofo, A., Galluzzi, A., & Zito, F. (2021). A Modest Suggestion: Baking Using Sourdough - a Sustainable, Slow-Paced, Traditional and Beneficial Remedy against Stress during the Covid-19 Lockdown. Human Ecology, 49(1), 99–105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00219-y
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2026/narrativesandworlds/schedule/10
Bio
Vee Kennedy is a full-time Instructor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida and is also enrolled in the Texts and Technology PhD Program. Their work has been published in The Journal of Replaying Japan, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy, Composition Forum, and WPA: Writing Program Administration. Professor Kennedy's research interests include rhetoric in translation and localization, Japanese media studies, neurodivergence and accessibility, and decolonial theory. When they are standing over the stand mixer at 2:00 A.M., what stares back is a close reading of carbohydrates.
Emily K. Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Department of English (Technical Communication and Digital Humanities), graduate faculty in the Technical Communication MA program, and core faculty in the Texts and Technology Ph.D. program. She is co-author of Critical Making in the Age of AI (with Anastasia Salter, Amherst, 2025) and Playful Pedagogy in the Pandemic: Pivoting to Games-Based Learning (with Anastasia Salter, Routledge 2022). Johnson has served as Principal Investigator of a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education investigating the efficacy of five of her co-designed video games (computer and virtual reality) for language learning. Her work has been published in Communication Design Quarterly, Technical Communication Quarterly, Computers and Composition, Computers and Education, the Journal for Universal Computer Science, and more.