Food Studies

This course is designed to give students an overview of important contemporary issues in food studies, and a taste of a variety of ways to approach those issues. We will study the social, economic, psychological, and cultural impacts of food and cooking, in homes, schools, and professions, and the social contexts for our relationships with food.

How can we understand the system that brings food from the field to the plate? What characterizes our current food system? What alternatives have existed in the past and might exist in the future? This course will examine these questions, using a variety of investigative tools to better understand food systems and commerce.

This course examines the cultures of food, exploring how people use food to define themselves as individuals, groups, and societies, and how cultural concerns shape food. The course investigates the meaning and significance of food in different cultures, and how race, ethnicity gender, socioeconomic status and religion influence food choices.

Foundations in Food Policy addresses normative questions about food policy: how should we make decisions about our food system?; and descriptive questions about food policy: How do we make these decisions, in practice? The course looks at food policy through the perspectives of its stakeholders to investigate what food policy is and what it does.

An internship is a supervised practical experience. A practicum is a supervised practical application of previously studied theory. 

This project focuses on an empirical or historical investigation, culminating in a written report. 

Independent work done under professorial supervision.