ANTHRO 3556 - What Makes a Meal: Anthropological Explorations of Food Production, Consumption, and Performance (HUM/TR 4-5:20pm)

In this course, we explore what we eat, how we eat it, and why we eat it through an anthropological lens. Food is important in many ways. It is a key component is our daily lives and habits. Exploring foodways through an anthropological lens allows us to understand the construction of boundaries and expressions. Food is not just nutrition, it is also taste, memory, politics, ritual, communication, and power. Food has the ability to change the very nature of our genetics. Food is comfort and home while simultaneously is novel and uncomfortable. It heals and it destroys. Through the semester, we will learn how anthropologists study food and foodways, highlighting the socio-cultural, linguistic, biological, and archaeological frameworks. We will learn how different communities interact with food and how foodways can shape and be shaped by the societies we live in, especially the power of food in shaping our modern world systems.

CWP 2030 - Food Writing Workshop: From Identity to Social Justice (HUM, SC/MWF 1-1:50pm)

From Proust's madeleine moment to rap songs about truffle butter and milkshakes, food is an enormous part of identity, status, and culture. As an object for analysis, food rests at the center of the intersection of race, class, gender, and more. This course will explore food from a variety of angles and, most importantly, as a mode of social justice. Based heavily on scholarly readings and weekly writing workshops, the course asks students to think and write critically about the role eating plays in their personal identity, the culture with which they or others identify, and as a way to enact equitable social change. Students will rely on analytical and research skills, with an emphasis on the idea that all writing is creative and can enact a meaningful paradigm shift, even if the subject is as seemingly innocuous as food.

JIMES 3740 - Of Dishes, Taste, and Class: History of Food in the Middle East (HUM, LCD/MW 3-4:20pm)

This course will cover the history of food and drink in the Middle East to help us understand our complex relation with food and look at our lives from perspectives we intuitively feel or by implication know, but rarely critically and explicitly reflect on. Food plays a fundamental role in how humans organize themselves in societies, differentiate socially, culturally, and economically, establish values and norms for religious, cultural, and communal practices, and define identities of race, gender, and class. This course does not intend to spoil, so to speak, this undeniably one of the most pleasurable human needs and activities, but rather to make you aware of the social meaning of food and reflect on how food shapes who we are as individuals and societies. We will study the history of food and drink in the Middle East across the centuries until the present time, but be selective in choosing themes, geographic regions, and historical periods to focus on. Please consult the instructor if you have not taken any course in the humanities. Enrollment priority given to seniors and juniors.

Public Health and Society 4012 - Global Hunger, Malnutrition, and Obesity (Writing intensive/T-Th 4pm-5:20pm)

This course critically examines global and local paradigms of food production, nutrition, and health through an interdisciplinary lens. We begin by analyzing the dominant "feed the world" model rooted in the Green Revolution and industrial agriculture. Drawing on work by Glenn Stone and others, we explore the social and ecological shortcomings of this model and the promise of agroecological alternatives—often developed by Indigenous and smallholder farmers themselves.

We then shift our focus to the politics of food and health in the United States. Through readings by Julie Guthman, Natalie Boero, and Gyorgy Scrinis, we interrogate how fatphobia, the concept of an "obesity epidemic," and reductive nutritionist ideologies have shaped American food and health discourse—often in ways that reinforce social inequality and benefit corporate interests.

Finally, we investigate how these paradigms travel globally, with a focus on Guatemala, Malawi, the Philippines, Ghana, and West Papua. We consider how global development projects and interventions (e.g., GMOs, nutrition education) interact with local foodways and sociopolitical dynamics. Through this, students will come to understand that hunger and malnutrition are often political problems—rooted in inequality, dispossession, and systemic violence—rather than simply technical ones.

Throughout the course, students will develop their analytical and writing skills through a series of drafts and final papers, culminating in a reflection on their evolving understanding of food systems and justice.

Public Health and Society 3010 - Special Topics: Food Policy (MW 10am-11:20am)