Courses

We examine broad issues that currently shape our food system and explore ways to mobilize legal and policy tools in order to strategically respond to these issues. Topics include legal and policy underpinnings of the United States’ and global food systems, economic and social conditions, inequities of access to adequate healthy food, and public health and environmental crises. Students gain an understanding of the legal and policy pathways and develop effective actions to address the many complex issues that characterize—and threaten—our food system.

We explore a broad range of advocacy tools and techniques to address issues that currently shape and challenge our food system. Topics include the legal and policy underpinnings of current food systems, economic and social conditions, inequities of access to healthy food, and public health concerns. Students gain an understanding of the policy, social and legal underpinnings of the food system, and learn to creatively and collaboratively develop effective approaches to address the many complex issues that characterize and threaten it.

We identify the meaning and significance of food in different cultures by exploring the way that ethnicity, gender, race, socioeconomic status and religion influence our food choices and food preserves culture. We look critically at the following questions: how can food have different meanings and uses for individuals, groups, or societies? How does food function both to foster community feeling and drive wedges among people? What are some prevailing academic theories that help us identify and understand individual and collective identities?

The course will focus on New Orleans with its rich history, unique location and distinctive cultures as a prime location to study the intersection of food, identity and culture. New Orleans has both shaped and been shaped by an idiosyncratic set of food practices, rituals, and beliefs. Through a firsthand study of the city, its history, its people and its food ways, student will gain a thorough understanding of food and culture in New Orleans.

The goal of this course is to analyze the consumer side of food markers and related policy using tools of microeconomic analysis. In the first half of the course theoretical tools are developed, starting from individual choice and moving up to market demand. In the second part of the course, the focus shifts to applications of consumer economic theory in the food system, and how policies can alter consumer behavior.

The course provides students with an intermediate level understanding of the microeconomics of firm or business behavior, & to apply these tools to current policy issues in the food system. Students explore the effect of firm decision-making on size, scale, & scope, & apply the tools to firms in the food sector. A range of outcomes is explored: free market, firm self regulation, socially responsible firm behavior, shared value firm behavior, & government regulation. The course is designed for policy & food interested students with little as well as no background in economics, or for those who have completed an introductory course that used a text on par with Krugman & Wells.

Development of new concepts in food business operations through planning, organization, implementation, and evaluation of independent and multiunit operations: concept development, initiation, financing, site selection, franchising and analysis and control of risk.

Examination of food and diets from historical and international perspectives. Considers the origins of foods- the co-evolution of world cuisines and civilizations- the international exchange and spread of food technologies following the voyages of Columbus - and the effects of the emergent global economy on food production- diets- and health.

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 focuses on the role design plays in framing the food environment, from production to consumption and explores how designers influence and shape stakeholders in the food system. Students investigate the interaction of users with designed places, objects, sensorial experiences as well as ideas, services, and systems and learn to analyze the built/material work.

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.

This course critically analyzes foods" portrayal across media platforms. We unpack how the media influences taste, purchases, and food beliefs; how it develops characters by what they eat and drink; and how it creates trends and movements. We explore cooking as entertainment, food shopping as a personal statement, and how media intersects with class, gender and racial tropes. Beginning with theory and moving through print, television, film, and the internet, students have hands-on experience interacting with the messages that define American food culture.

This course examines the legal and regulatory frameworks that underlie domestic food policy. Specific areas of emphasis are the jurisdictions of federal and state agencies, the role of the legislative bodies in creating policy, and the role of the judicial system in enforcing policies and regulations.

Explores the conceptual underpinnings of the distributive networks through which food travels from farm to table. Examines the relationships between markets, states, and society in their historical and contemporary forms. Employs case studies of how commodities travel through the food system at the local, national and international levels. Topics include mass markets and niche markets; the culture of markets; reciprocity, exchange and redistribution; conventional and alternative supply chains.

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

Analysis of the economic and social causes and consequences of current trends in food production- marketing and product development.

Examination of food service systems, with emphasis on site-specific and corporate functions and current trends in the industry.

Theoretical & applied aspects of research design, data analysis, & interpretation. Students teams conduct, analyze, & present an evaluative or applied research project in food studies. Should be taken in the last year of study in the master’s program.

The Food Studies Doctoral seminar is required for all Food Studies doctoral students from their first semester to their last. Food Studies doctoral students enroll each semester until the time of graduation (even for students conducting fieldwork outside of NYC). The doctoral students and faculty meet five times a semester for three hours. Students discuss their progress, read and discuss assigned readings, and give seminars on their research.