Curriculum

The 33-credit MA program in Food Studies employs approaches from the humanities and social sciences to prepare you to analyze the current American food system, its global connections, and local alternatives. You’ll examine food through a variety of lenses and in a range of contexts, emerging with a deeper understanding of the production, distribution, and consumption of food.

Core Course Sequence

You’ll take core courses in food policy, food systems, food culture, and nutrition, and an additional 18-24 credits of specialization coursework in areas like policy and advocacy, business and entrepreneurship, or media and cultural analysis. You’ll also have the opportunity to take experiential courses that are based in New York City or at an NYU global site

Sample Elective Courses

Food Economics: Consumer Behavior 

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.

Global Food Cultures: Paris

We explore the performance of French identity through the lens of food to unpack how gender, race, socioeconomic status, and immigration clash with the espoused French national ideal of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Through visits to markets, restaurants, bakeries, wholesale and retail outlets, farms, and cooperatives, we explore the material culture that makes possible acquiescence and resistance to these ideas of identity and ultimately will discover the limits and possibilities implicit in our own personal ideals.

Introduction to Urban Agriculture 

This course provides a practical introduction to urban agriculture. Students learn horticultural skills at the NYU Urban Farm Lab. Students learn about biological processes and how they fit together in a system. Through visits to other sites around the city, students are exposed to various strategies for practicing urban horticulture. Additionally, we engage with greater themes found within urban agriculture such as entrepreneurship, food justice, individual and group sustenance, cultural enactments of identity, community building, and education.