Undergraduate Courses

Course focuses on how people use food to identify themselves as individuals & as groups. Students will ascertain the meaning & significance of food in different cultures by exploring the way that ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status & religion influence our food choices. In addition, they will also examine how people transmit & preserve culture using food. Through reading scholarly articles, personal essays, book excerpts, newspaper articles, cookbooks & viewing films, students will examine the intricate relationships that people have with food. Course looks critically at the following questions: how can food have different meanings & uses for different people? How does food function both to foster community feeling & drive wedges among people? What are some prevailing academic theories that help society understand some of these patterns of identification & how do societies change over time?

Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Society & Social Sciences for Steinhardt students.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies
• Liberal Arts Core: Societies and the Social Sciences

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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 & Social Sciences for Steinhardt students.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies
• Liberal Arts Core: Societies and the 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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Department: Nutrition and Food Studies

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.

• Liberal Arts Core: Cultures and Contexts

This course investigates current transformations in the food systems and
cultures of Berlin under conditions of globalization. How have produce,
people and animals interacted to make life possible in modern cities and
how have those interactions changed over time in Berlin'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) and sound (music), to smell, taste 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, field trips students
will master established facts 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 Buenos Aires 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 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.

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 investigates current transformations in the food systems and
cultures of Prague 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.