Courses

Using a wide range of film genres, we examine food’s role in the human experience. Food and foodways in film portray food and cooking norms, but also provide subtle and overt messaging about culture, ethnicity, race, class and gender. Using a survey of international 20th and 21st century films where food and foodways function as a foundational aspect combined with related texts, students explore food as a visual
messenger. Employing film criticism and theory, students will develop an understanding of the performative aspect of food in art and in our daily lives.

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.

The hands-on course introduces students to food styling, with dedicated time working in the NYU Food Lab where students develop practical skills and gain experience with styling food. The practical work is complemented by discussions of the history of food styling, current trends, and the varying formats food styling
takes in the food industry. Students will build a foundation of knowledge and practical skills as they learn the craft of food styling. Students should have basic, home level cooking skills.

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 how food is portrayed across media platforms. We unpack how 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 as personal identity, and how media intersects with class, gender and racial tropes. Beginning with theory and moving through print, television, film, and the internet, students interact with the messages that define American food culture.

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.

Overview of the policy making process, particularly as it concerns U.S. food and nutrition policy. Students consider the role and organization of government in the realm of food and nutrition policy and examine all stages of the policy cycle, including agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Topics include the role of government in regard to agriculture, global food trade, food safety, retail and restaurants, and nutritional support.

Of the 8 billion people on the planet today, only about 2 billion rely on supermarkets and grocery stores for their food. The remaining 6 billion rely on street vendors,
formal and informal food markets that take place on sidewalks, street corners, alleys, and parking lots. This course examines the cultural aspects and processes related to food provisioning, in a global context.

Students design, develop, conduct, analyze, and present an evaluative or applied research project in food studies. Projects may be peer-review research papers, white papers, curriculum development, business plans, book proposals, longform journalism, media projects or proposed creative projects. Should be taken in the last year of study in the master’s program. May be taken in one or two semesters.

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.

The core Food Systems course covers the US food system from an applied economic perspective, recognizing that the food system operates in a market. We begin by studying the mechanics of the different stages of the food system: farm, distribution, retailing and consumer. The course then turns to social and environmental costs of the food system. After covering the strengths and weakness of the food system, students explore topics such as sustainability, globalization, resiliency, consumer choice, and equity.

This course combines practical lessons in writing for a popular audience with a bird’s eye view of the tradition of food writing; an engagement with craft; and a contemporary understanding of food’s place in our culture and politics. We address social trends and movements including political upheaval, racial and economic justice, gender and identity, and intense social change through writing about food. Students learn the publishing and editing process.

We explore the intersection of gender, sexuality, identity, culture and food. Students analyze sexual identity, human sexuality, sexual orientation and gender on real and perceived cultural views of food and consumption. Topics include how society assigns gender to food by investigating historical and contemporary texts. Employing advertisements, menus, cookbooks, TV, films and packaging, students
critically analyze gendering practices. Theoretical frameworks include queer theory, early feminist theory, Whiteness theory and male studies and transgender studies.

Not Available.

The Indian Ocean world has emerged as a major area of research in recent decades, although connections across the Indian Ocean go back to antiquity: the spice trade; the circulation of stimulants like betel leaf and areca nut, qat, coffee, and tea; the dispersal of staples like rice and millet; and the supply of specialty comestibles, such as sea cucumber and swallow’s nests. Through readings, essays and class discussion, students explore the period before European hegemony to study the connected histories of food in the Indian Ocean world.

Using food as a lens, this course examines the history, culture, and political economy of Berlin and Prague, focusing on how each has been shaped by socialist/post-socialist political economies and ideology. Topics will include food vis-a-vis the European Union; ostalgie; immigration; industrial and recent sustainable agriculture; and the emerging food culture. Employing contemporary and historical perspectives, the course will include lectures by established scholars, visits to museums, markets, restaurants, farms, and cooperatives, wholesale and retail outlets.

This course is an interdisciplinary and intercultural examination of human communication through food in Ireland. Explores the social, economic, political, and cultural ramifications of food production and consumption. Students will have a unique opportunity to explore various local, regional and transnational, and food rituals.

This course explores how food traditions and heritage are identified, supported, and
promoted at national and global levels, and examines their role and functions in Spaniards’ everyday life. Through visits to markets, bakeries, wholesale and retail outlets, tapas and wine bars, restaurants, and menu del día eateries we examine how tradition and heritage are brought into the 21st century in public spaces that are also symbolic for local and national identities. Food professionals and experts, designers and scholars help us understand the dynamics of this unique country.

This master's level course explores the food and foodways of the culturally and historically rich culinary landscape of Mexico. In the city of Puebla, which is considered to be the birthplace of modern Mexican cusine, students will be fully immersed in traditional Mexican culinary and nutritional practices though classroom instruction, guest, lectures, cooking classes, and a wide variety of field trips to markets, local farms, restaurants, and production sites.