Courses

Principles and practice of identification, 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.

Basic principles & practical experience in development of beverage systems & menus. Considers pricing, equipment, legal, merchandising & personnel policies.

Techniques for communicating information about nutrition to professionals, the public, the media, and food and beverage marketers.

Aimed at students who expect to read and interpret, rather than conduct, statistical analyses, this course is designed to help students become better and more critical consumers of quantitative evidence. Using research studies discussed in the popular media and focused on currently debated questions in health and human development, the course covers key concepts in quantitative reasoning, basic statistics, and research design. Research readings will focus on topical issues regarding food and nutrition, exercise, sleep, education, and child development.

Liberal Arts Core/CORE-MAP Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Quantitative Reasoning only for students whose Program of Study does not include a Statistics Course-see your Advisor for more information.

This course explores the multi-faceted nature of New York City as a cultural and economic hub for food and media. Food is never just something we eat, but in New York City food has taken on an increasing prominence in public life. Food shapes communities and is an increasingly important marker of social and cultural identities. Media of all types fuel and shape our connections to food. Tastes are defined; diets and food habits are promoted and demoted; food fortunes and food celebrities are made. How has New York City become so important to the business of taste? What goes on behind-the-scenes? Topics include: Food-related publishing and broadcasting; green markets, food trucks, and systems of supply and distribution; marketing; Chinatowns, diversity, fusion, and identity. Open to majors and non-majors including special students. Classroom instruction is supplemented by site visits, guest lectures, and field research.

Employing a global perspective, this course introduces students to the major issues and concepts regarding food and culture. Examining food and diet from historical and transnational perspectives, we examine the effect of colonialism and immigration on agriculture, food technologies, diets, and health. Through field trips, guest speakers, discussions, hands-on activities and eating, students explore how food influences and is influenced by myriad factors, including politics, economics, climate, geography, technology, and culture.

Introduction to the art and science of cuisine characteristics of selected world cultures through lectures, demonstrations, hands-on preparation, and field trips.

In this course students think across disciplines to consider what it means to satisfy our literal and metaphorical hunger. Students analyze the relationships between body and soul, self and surrounding, hunger and satiety and visit NYC-based institutions like Essex Street Crossing and the Street Vendor Project to further understand how feeding body and soul works outside of the classroom. Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent- satisfies the requirement for Cultures and Contexts.

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.

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

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 & 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.

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.

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.