Undergraduate Courses

This course unites the liberal arts experience with a specialization in food and nutrition. It contains three areas of focus: food and nutrition history; ethical issues in food and nutrition; and emerging technologies as they related to food and nutrition.

Food is all around us. It influences who we are and how we related to our surroundings. This course explores food in the city from multiple points of view. Students observe and analyze various aspects of food in the city, from personal experiences to large social issues such as gentrification and food insecurity, and examine the cultural, social, and political aspects of food systems. Students acquire familiarity with basic ethnographic skills and methods such as interviews, observations, visual ethnography, and virtual ethnography

Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Society and Social Sciences.

The ways in which writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers have used food as a theme or symbol for reasons of aesthetic, social, cultural, or political commentary.

This course will explore food messaging and representation in moments of crisis, both historically and also in our current COVID-19 moment. Employing multiple lenses including ethical, political, communal, and individual, we’ll examine such topics as medieval religious aestheticism/asceticism, World War II propaganda, global notions of food waste, the ethos of food sharing and commensality, and media messaging in the contemporary COVID moment.

Issues related to methods of food production, distribution, marketing, trade and politics, and the impact of these methods on foods intake and the environment in contemporary societies.

Overview of legal issues affecting food service management: laws- contracts- taxes- and relations with administrative and regulatory agencies- both domestic and international.

Organization and management of commercial and institutional food service facilities in hotels, restaurants, and educational and community program sites.

Food safety, processing, and regulatory issues related to the role of microorganisms in food processing and preservation. The use of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) to prevent contamination of food, equipment, and personnel.

Demonstration of techniques for photographing foods for use in print and other media formats.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed food system inequities that prioritize profits over public health. Students explore effects of unsustainable food production and consumption methods on food insecurity, obesity-influenced diseases and the environment and consider if food choices should be individual responsibility or government policy. Emphasis on roles for individuals, government, food industry, and civil society in determining food system goals and functions and how people can advocate for food systems that are healthier, more equitable, sustainable, and resilient.

Institutional and commercial food preparation and service, menu planning and pricing, recipe standardization integrated with techniques, methods, principles, standards of food purchasing, receiving, merchandising, and staff supervision.

Scientific and sensory principles of food evaluation; professional methods, quality assurance, and objective experiments in advanced food preparation.

Focuses on a variety of issues surrounding food production from an agricultural and a processing perspective. Students will gain an understanding of the ideological underpinnings of American agriculture as well as the forces that transformed food production from a regional to a national system. Various approaches will be used to examine the food system including the political, economic, social and cultural dimensions of production.

This course uses a multidisciplinary perspective to explore the question of how food influences human interaction. Students use primary research literature from neuroscience and behavioral biology as well as material evidence from the humanities to examine this central question through history across diverse civilizations and cultures.

This course investigates current transformations in the food systems and cultures of London under conditions of globalization. A people’s diet is dependent on their geography, although no people on earth eat everything edible in their environment, and they seek distant stimulants that their locales cannot support. Through lectures, readings, field trips students will master established facts and concepts about contemporary urban food cultures and produce new knowledge of the same.

This course is designed to put in perspective the interactions between culture, food systems, migration, and globalization, and how the interactions are impacting on the food security and nutrition of the people. The course will detail the culture and traditions (including changes over the years), food ways, the current food environment in Accra, and the drivers of the nutrition transition. This course will also help students to understand the importance of nutrition sensitive agriculture in
food systems, the impacts of urbanization / migration on these, and the
influence of government policies on the dynamics. The course also has a
field component which includes visits to a traditional ruler (to learn
about food culture and festivals), markets (traditional and modern), and
fast-food outlets/restaurants.

This course will explore current transformations in the food systems and
cultures of Sydney under conditions of globalization. Through lectures,
readings and various activities, students will master established facts and
concepts about contemporary urban food cultures and produce new knowledge
about them. We will ask how produce, people and animals have interacted to
make life possible in Sydney and its surrounding suburbs broadly. We
question how those interactions have changed over time and the impact of
changing modes of food production, distribution, and preparation on human
health, knowledge systems, livelihoods, social relations, and the natural
environment. We also consider the built environment and the kinds of
systems that have been built to provide energy, portable water, provide
clean air and process waste.

Students taking this course are likely to be committed to an integration
between theory and practice. This could include: how you translate your
learning from the course into your everyday food practices; how your own
choices can improve the food chain; practical tips in cultivation;
campaigning through social movements and advocacy; setting up your own
projects, impacting policy and government programs and many more.

This course investigates current transformations in the food systems and
cultures of Tel Aviv under conditions of globalization and urbanization.
How have produce, people and animals interacted to make life possible in
modern cities and how have those interactions changed over time in Tel
Aviv's history? What kinds of systems have been built to provide energy,
bring potable water into cities, take sewage out, and provide clean air?

As a course in new sensory urbanism this curriculum seeks to expand the
traditional scope and range of the studied senses from sight (e.g. art,
architecture [Bauhaus in Tel Aviv, *The International Style; The White City*)
and sound (music), to smell, taste (the growing sense of new Israeli
cuisine and its export to the world) and touch, so as to rethink what it
means to be a modern urban subject engaged in the pleasures and powers of
consumption. Through lectures, readings and field trips students will
master established theories and concepts about contemporary urban food
cultures and produce new knowledge of the same.

This course investigates current transformations in the food systems and cultures of Florence under conditions of globalization. A people’s diet is dependent on their geography, although no people on earth eat everything edible in their environment, and they seek distant stimulants that their locales cannot support. Through lectures, readings, field trips students will master established facts and concepts about contemporary urban food cultures and produce new
knowledge of the same.

What are the distinctions between facts, data, information, opinion, and understanding? Through what techniques of argumentation are these concepts discovered and/or achieved? Course introduces students to rhetoric"the art of persuasion. We explore techniques of rhetoric related to truth telling and opinion formation. We consider the significance of these activities to the city (polis) and matters held in common (res publica). Activities include participant observations of persuasion in courtroom settings. Optimal for students considering law careers.