Current Course Offerings
(Spring 2010)

Producing Food, Producing Difference
Course examines race, class, and gender as organizing principles for social experience, with a focus on food as a key symbolic and material resource that is unequally distributed through entitlements rather than need. Debates about local, global, artisanal, and commercial food intersect with debates about cultural differences. 

Maymester  Producing Food and Culture in Italy with GustoLab
An introduction to Italian culinary culture focusing on the production and consumption of local foods indigenous to two regions. Two weeks to explore the social and economic aspects of food production, explorations include the Mediterranean diet, kitchen labs, visits to production facilities (organic kiwis, buffalo mozzarella, olive oil)  and culminates in student multimedia presentations about foods studied.

Food Fights as Moral Panics and Cultural Debates
Course examines contemporary debates about the place of food in our society with an eye towards their historical development and significance for the future.  The moral, ethical, political, and cultural dimensions of food are discussed via the “obesity epidemic,” the food industry and its critics, geographical indicators and the defense of national cuisines, fair trade and food access.