Course Details

Cross-cultural policies, practices, and beliefs about the production, preparation, consumption, and distribution of food vary widely. This course examines food in historical, political, social, and cultural contexts around the globe. It is divided into four sections that require students to apply concepts in food studies to international case studies and global examples: Cross-Cultural & Global Perspectives on Food; Culture, Identity, and Food; The Political Economy of Food; and Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Responses to Hunger. Course topics include subsistence patterns and cultural patterns of food preparation and consumption; cultural practices involving food preferences and taboos; the globalization of foods and cuisines; labor practices in industrial agriculture; alternative economies of food; global policies and practices developed to eliminate hunger and malnutrition; the use/misuse of global food aid, and others.

Outcomes: Explain the rationales of cross-cultural beliefs and practices of our own and others' foodways; Apply interdisciplinary perspectives to analyze the historical, cultural, and political roots of social phenomena and world problems involving food and society; Assess various dimensions of the forms and mechanisms of oppression, discrimination, or privilege in global and local food systems; Investigate coalitions and key ideas, past and present, which address and advocate for economic and social justice in the food system.