Courses

Principles and practice of indentification, comparison, and evaluation of selected foods, ingredients, techniques, and equipment for recipe formulation, menu planning, or preparation with an emphasis on modifications to meet specific nutritional or other requirements.

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

This course explores organic agriculture from multiple angles, starting with a historical exploration of organic and finishing with policy approaches to organic. Specific aspects studied include the environmental benefits of organic production systems, the political economy of the US organic regulation, health benefits of organic, and organic consumption and marketing.

This course focuses on contemporary political struggles for control over agrifood systems. The course examines the relationship between the capitalist development of agrifood systems and national sovereignty and focusses on Latin America, a major U.S. agricultural trading partner. Students will review recent research on topics, such as trade integration, land grabbing, food systems financialization, states and contemporary agrarian policies, agroecology, and transnational peasant movements.

Course examines the process of agricultural globalization & its effects on the process of rural & agricultural development in the global south. Specifically, analyze the incorporation of agricultural producers & processors in developing countries into the supply chains of global food brands & retailers. The goal is to identify how globalization is shaping institutions that govern agricultural laborers in poor & middle income communities, who are the most vulnerable actors in the global economy

Agricultural policy and some food policy is regulated by The Farm Bill, which Congress reauthorizes approximately every five years. This course covers the history of the farm bill, starting from its inception via the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 up to the most recent Farm Act. Students analyze how agricultural policy is influenced by the existing political, economic and agricultural climate at the time the Farm Bill is being debated. Key shifts in farm policy include the movement from direct farm support to crop insurance, and the recent inclusion of grant-funded programming for food movement-related programs.

We examine contemporary food production, distribution and consumption in the context of social, cultural, technological and biological processes through globalization. Employing the humanities and the social sciences, this course prepares students to analyze the current American food system, its global connections, and proposed local alternatives. Through lectures, readings and research the students master contemporary urban food cultures and produce new knowledge.

This course offers an in-depth look at a specific cuisine or cuisines. We look at the historical evolution of cuisine including but not limited to agriculture, technology, geo-political forces, climate change, geographic border changes, colonialism, post-colonialism, and nationalism. We analyze this cuisine in its specific cultural context as well as through a broader, global prism. We pay particular attention to performances of national identity through food and cooking. We rely on both academic research and cookbooks.

Introduction to academic and professional resources at New York University and to career opportunities in food studies and food management, nutrition and dietetics, or public health. Class meets three or four times during the first semester of study.

In this hands-on communications course on food media, students learn how to use use social media, write for the web, analyze photography and video, and build and develop a website for an idea -- whether it be business, personal, or professional.

We investigate New York City immigrant history and the fabric of today’s emerging communities. In addition to historical and contemporary readings, we “walk” the community through exploring restaurants, community centers, food markets, street vendors, historic and cultural sites. Students explore these communities not as outsiders looking in, but rather through their eyes and through their perspective, and learn GIS mapping tools.

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.

Consumer behavior in food markets is more complex than "voting with your fork." In this course, students examine theoretical tools of consumer behavior, including how consumer preferences, prices and income inform individual choice, and apply those tools to food markets and systems. Applications vary by term. Past applications include the impacts of racial discrimination, gender pay gap, food support systems, and others. No previous economics coursework required.

Firm strategic behavior has a large influence on the food system. In this course, students use intermediate microeconomic analysis to deepen their understanding of how and why firms operate in the food system. Theoretical tools are developed in the first half of the course, including how firms maximize profits under competition, monopoly and oligopoly. Next, students examine firm organization, using transaction costs to understand why firms exist and why some firms choose to vertically integrate. Past case studies include meat packing, organic milk processing, and contracting in agriculture. No previous economics coursework is required.

Affirm the value of creativity in entrepreneurship; learn the specific processes needed to develop and open a new start up food business – product and/or retail; learn basic financial guidelines needed to open a new food business; understand unique attributes of food business financial styles and benchmarks; understand general steps to develop, manufacture and launch a food product; learn the logistic systems requirements and other resources for proper operation; and, understand the current labor challenges and issues.

We examine food from historical and transnational perspectives, including agricultural origins, famines, co-evolution of world cuisines and civilizations, global exchange and spread of food and technologies following the Columbian invasion, issues of hunger, and the effects of the emergent global economy on food, production, diets, foodways and health. Students gain a greater understanding of how food production and consumption influences a myriad of factors, including politics, economics, prevailing notions of health, climate, geography, technology, and culture.

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.