Fall 2023 Sustainable Food Systems Courses – Sustainable Food Systems Initiative

Fall 2023 Sustainable Food Systems Courses

Interested in taking a food systems course next semester? See below for a sampling of course offerings for fall semester 2023

**Note that you do not need to minor in Food & Environment or pursue a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Food Systems to enroll in these courses**


UNDERGRADUATE

Food, Energy, Environmental Justice
BIOLOGY 101-001/ENVIRON 101-001 (4 credits)
John Vandermeer | M/W/F 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

In recent years it has become apparent that current energy and food sourcing is damaging the environment from global warming to pesticide runoff. This course treats the issues of energy, food, and the environment from a biological and sociopolitical point of view. It emphasizes the historical trajectories that generated current conditions and the scientific options for revamping our energy and food systems to make them more consistent with environmental sustainability.

Food and Drink in the Middle East
MIDEAST 209.001 / ENVIRON 219.001 LEC (4 credits)
Gottfried Hagen, Geoff Emberling | T/Th 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM

Friday discussions 10-11 or 12-1
This course will explore the social history of Middle Eastern (and North African) food and drink, examining records from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, medieval cookbooks and wine poetry from Baghdad, imperial art and account books of the Ottoman palace, to modern cookbook-memoirs. We will also have a direct experience of culinary practices in the Middle East and the diaspora. Food and social practices of eating and drinking provide a uniquely intimate version of the history of this region through lived experience that also shows the universal humanity of these cultures.

Globalization & its Discontents: Struggle for Food, Water, and Energy
ENVIRON 270.001 LEC / RCIDIV 270.001 LEC (4 credits)
Ivette Perfecto | M/W/F 9:00AM – 10:00AM

Discussion on Friday’s either 1-2:30, 2:30-4, or 11:30-1
We will examine sustainable development and globalization through the struggles with food and water scarcity and energy justice. Using lectures, films, discussions, and assignments, this course aims to foster critical thinking about how societies are organized and to evaluate what we can contribute to the pursuit of a sustainable and just biosphere.

Topics in Archaeology Local Food Producers
ANTHRARC 296.001 (3 credits)
Lisa Young | M/W 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM

What is the story behind our food? This class explores this question from the perspective of the people who produce our food. You will learn about changes in food production over the last 10,000 years from archaeological and historical case studies, as well as the stories of contemporary farmers. Using an anthropological perspective, we explore contemporary issues of sustainability, food sovereignty, and the role of local food producers during times of crisis. You will also learn to conduct research on food using online sources.

Inexhaustible Seas? Marine Resources and Environmental Issues
​​ENVIRON 333.001 / EARTH 333.001 (4 credits)
Ingrid Hendy | M/W 1:00PM – 2:30PM

This course explores the mineral, energy and food resources of the ocean and environmental impacts that arise from the exploitation of these resources. We discuss conflicts in our competing uses of the ocean and its resources. We also examine both the popular and scientific literature surrounding these issues.

Foundations of Sustainable Food Systems
ENVIRON 462*/ URP 427*/ URP 527/ EAS 528/ NUTR 555 (3 credits)
*Instructor permission required. Learn how to apply below.
Jennifer Blesh, Lesli Hoey, Andrew Jones | T/Th 1:00PM – 2:30PM

This course defines environmental activism as a social movement designed to affect positive and sustainable environmental change. We will articulate an overarching set of values to which people can respond, as well as a shared set of symbols, heroes, slogans, and other cultural referents.

Apply here.

ALA Topics – Measure of Our Meals
ALA 370.002 (3 credits)
Margot Finn | M/W 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

In this course, we explore the cross-disciplinary methods used to study food. We use life cycle analysis to measure the differences between conventional and alternative production systems. We use ethnography and close examination of different media to explore different cooking and eating practices and their cultural significance. Lastly, we explore the different methods used by historians to understand the development of ancient cuisines and GMOs.

Biology of Nutrition
BIOLOGY 105.001 (4 credits)
Josephine Kurdziel | T/Th 11:30 AM -1:00 PM

This course is a natural science course for undergraduates to learn about general nutrition. The course will give students a biologically sound foundation on which to make judgments about personal and public health, related to food production and consumption.

Plants and Human Health
BIOLOGY 212 – 001 (3 credits)
Yin-Long Qiu | T/Th 4-5:30

Plants are the ultimate source of all human food and most medicine, and also play essential roles in environment for healthy human life. In this course, students learn basic botany, human use of plants as food and medicine, and the important relationship between environment and human health.

Plants and People
EARTH 262-001 (3 credits)
Selena Smith | T/Th 10-11:30am

This course examines the relationship between plants, people, and the environment; focusing on economically important plants. Plants are important for survival, aesthetic, and environmental purposes and have had significant impacts on human history, society, and environment. Today plants are critical for our future. Topics include foods, fibers, drugs, and ornamentals.

Global Water
ENVIRON 306-001 (3 credits)
Marc Gaden | M/W 8:30-10am

This course examines a critical environmental issue of the 21st century: freshwater scarcity, an issue that intersects with other environmental, economic and political issues such as food, biodiversity, trade, international security, and global justice. Questions are raised concerning international cooperation, local-global interactions, collective action, sustainability, development, trade, North-South relations, equity, and diplomatic practice.

Topics in Biology: Coastal Ecology and Sustainability
EEB 303 (3 credits)
T/Th 10:00AM – 11:30AM | Jacob Allgeier

Coastal marine ecosystems are among the most productive in the world, yielding numerous services for society. Yet these ecosystems are also among the most affected by humans. This course will introduce participants to the ecology and sustainability of near-shore marine environments with particular focus on coral reefs, salt marshes, mangroves, seagrass beds, and rocky intertidal ecosystems.

Students will learn the basic ecological principles that underpin the function of near-shore ecosystems and will explore how changing environmental and biological factors interact to influence their sustainability. There will be a strong emphasis on the important services that these ecosystems yield for society, and emerging ways in which these services are being managed for long-term sustainability. Classes will be broken up into lecture and discussion sections. Throughout the course, students will work in groups to lead a discussion on a topic of their choice with an emphasis on emerging themes in coastal sustainability.

Class link.

GRADUATE

Foundations of Sustainable Food Systems
ENVIRON 462*/ URP 427*/ URP 527/ EAS 528/ NUTR 555 (3 credits)
*Instructor permission required. Learn how to apply below.
Jennifer Blesh, Lesli Hoey, Andrew Jones | T/Th 1:00PM – 2:30PM

This course defines environmental activism as a social movement designed to affect positive and sustainable environmental change. We will articulate an overarching set of values to which people can respond, as well as a shared set of symbols, heroes, slogans, and other cultural referents.

Apply here.

Transformative Food Systems Seminar
EAS 556.001, NUTR 563.001, URP 536.001 (1.5 credits)
*Instructor permission required*
Lesli Hoey, Ivette Perfecto| Fr 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM

This experientially-based course will build students’ equity competency – the knowledge, skills and values needed to recognize and address historical, structural inequities that pervade today’s food systems. The goal is to prepare reflective, visionary and strategic food systems leaders who use systems thinking, collaboration, and an ethics of justice.

Evolutionary Nutrition: Implications for Human Health
NUTR 610.001 (2 credits)
Edward Ruiz-Narvaez | Mo 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Dietary and cultural shifts/innovations (for example, cooking, domestication of plants and animals) during human origins may have acted as evolutionary forces shaping the physiology and metabolism as well as the genome of early humans. Exposure to modern diets may result in a mismatch of old adaptations to a new environment, potentially leading to so-called “diseases of civilization” such as hypertension, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. In this course, we will discuss human nutrition from an evolutionary perspective.

Eating Disorder Prevention and Treatment
NUTR 621.001 (3 credits)
Kendrin Sonneville | T/Th 1-2:30 PM

This course is designed to introduce students to eating disorders using a public health framework. Students will be exposed to key concepts and controversies in the eating disorders field.

Pathophysiology of Obesity
NUTR 639.001 (3 credits)
Peter Mancuso | M/W 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM

This course provides a framework for understanding the etiology and pathophysiology, and treatment of obesity. The course content will emphasize the influence of physiologic factors that contribute to the overconsumption of food, the pathophysiologic consequences of obesity, and current methods of treatment.

Diverse Farming Systems
EAS 553.001 (3 credits)
Ivette Perfecto | M/W 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

This interdisciplinary course critically explores intersecting literature on agroecology, biodiversity, ecosystem services, diversified farming systems, agroforestry, and farmer’s livelihoods. The course will focus on 1)the application of ecological theory to the study of diverse farming systems 2)biodiversity, and 3)social issues in diverse farming systems, such as tree and land tenure, gender issues and the social rural movements that promote diverse farming systems and agroecology.

Principles for Transition: Food, Fuel and Finance in a Biophysically Constrained, Ethically Challenged World
EAS 565 – 001 (2 credits)
Thomas Princen | M 5:30-7:30pm

Part 1 of this course develops a strong, demanding, focused notion of sustainability, one grounded in biophysical conditions and existing human practice. Part 2 elucidates power as part of the human condition, yet not necessarily coercive (power over) but also collaborative (power with). Part 3 starts with the premise that at the root of humans’ ecological problematic is their disconnect from natural systems. Reconnecting via world view, localizing and human-animal relations is explored.

BITTERSWEET: DISRUPTING FORCED LABOR IN SUGAR SUPPLY CHAINS
LAW 741 – 002 (3 credits)
Bridgette Carr, Elizabeth Campbell, Courtney Petersen | Th 12:30PM – 3:30PM
*Department Consent Required

The Human Trafficking Lab is a social justice innovation space where multidisciplinary student teams use design thinking to research and build replicable, scalable, and disruptive solutions to reduce vulnerability to trafficking. Students will work to fight exploitation at individual, organizational, and systemic levels. We believe the law is an incomplete, imperfect solution to reducing exploitation and that interdisciplinary, cross-industry collaboration is necessary. The work with individual survivors in the Clinic will help ensure the Lab is victim-centered and informed by lived-experience.

Our Fall 2023 focus will be reducing vulnerability to trafficking in supply chains. In Nov. 2022, the U.S. government found that over half of the sugar produced in the Dominican Republic resulted from forced labor. Actions to address this exploitation must be taken. The Lab, along with a coalition of NGOs, is working to respond to these findings to create long-term worker- led oversight of this supply chain to reduce labor trafficking.

Website.

Complex Systems in Ecology
EEB 497.001 (3 credits)
John Vandermeer | M/W 10-11:30am

This course will discuss various themes in complex systems as they are or might be applied to ecological systems. Topics will include, chaos, coupled oscillators, stochasticity, Turing processes, indirect nonlinearities, critical transitions, networks, and others.

Indigenous Sustainability and Environmental Justice
EAS 529 – 001 (3 credits)
M/W 1-2:30pm

Indigenous peoples are among the major architects of environmental movements focusing on sustainability and environmental justice. But whereas many environmentalists focus on restoring or conserving historic ecosystems, Indigenous peoples inhabit landscapes largely altered by different formations of colonialism and racial capitalism. For Indigenous peoples, environmental justice, climate change resilience, food sovereignty, and ecological restoration take on different meanings than typically have been priorities in other environmental movements and sciences. This course seeks to understand, from Indigenous perspectives, how
many Indigenous movements, Indigenous sciences and knowledge systems, and the projects of Indigenous organizations and governments seek to achieve sustainability and environmental justice, including the challenges they face and the lessons they have learned. The course cover topics within domains of Indigenous sciences and knowledge systems, Indigenous environmental activism and anti-colonial philosophies, Indigenous research approaches, Indigenous ecologies, Indigenous resilience, and Indigenous legal orders and strategies in law and policy.

Design for Health Studies
BIOSTAT 593-555 (1 credit)
Roderick Little | Th 7-8:30pm

This course is a critical exploration of the health issues related to domestic food security, food policy, and food programs, with a focus on maternal and child health. We will examine the array of negative health outcomes associated with food insecurity, discuss potential mechanisms underlying these associations, how food policy is made, the intersection of food policy with public health nutrition, and the influence of federal food assistance programs on diet-related outcomes for children and families.

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