Students will: grapple with the complex etiology and consequences of food insecurity in the U.S., including the historical roots of current programming; interrogate current approaches to addressing it at the local, state, and federal levels; and synthesize the state of the science toward policy proposals for strategic programmatic refinements.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Benefitting from collaborative instruction that draws on the expertise of professors from three different departments, students will practice systems thinking and examine foundational aspects of food systems from local to global levels across agroecology/environmental, public health/nutrition, and urban planning/policy dimensions.

Most of the scholarly and popular discussion of sustainable development in the U.S. focuses on cities.  But cities depend economically and ecologically on rural communities–small towns, villages, and counties. These smaller, rural governments manage an enormous part of the physical landscape, including much of the emerging renewable energy landscape. This course focuses on what sustainable development actually looks like in smaller, rural communities.  With the help of insights from sociology and environmental studies, we will explore these questions:

*     How are rural communities different from urban communities–socially, economically, and environmentally? Should we use a different model of development for them?

*     What challenges do these communities face in achieving sustainable development? What resources do they have?  What opportunities can we identify for rural sustainable development?

This course features a substantial civic engagement project. Students will immerse themselves in a small town beyond the borders Ann Arbor, listening to the town’s story in order to learn what sustainability might look like.  Assessment will focus on a term-long group project and individual work throughout the term.

Does locally grown food have a smaller carbon footprint? Have portion sizes increased, and is that making people fat? What is the history of “natural food”? This seminar examines how researchers answer these questions and more. Students will learn to interpret and conduct research on food across the disciplines.

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.

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.

Every human eats, and yet the styles and meaning of sharing food and drink together vary enormously across cultures. This course introduces students to anthropological approaches to cooking, feasting, fasting, the politics of obesity, and the cultures of fast, slow, artisanal, local and global foods.

This course uses food and drink as a window into the culture and history of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

This course looks at the historical and cultural development of food provisioning within African American culture. We explore how certain foodstuffs become traditional through the multi-ethnic societies of the early United States as well as in more recent historical moments like the Great Migration, the Dust Bowl, and the Black Power Movement. We will work to connect these moments to the everyday spaces of African American life by examining how domestic science, retail catalogs, radio, and television contribute to the symbolic meanings of food. By the end of the semester, students will better understand the contexts within which African Americans debate the value of group identity through food.

An “interrogation of knowledge systems” approach to selected problem areas in the study of the Black experience in North America, Caribbean and Latin America, and in Africa. Specific area and issue are determined by instructor and indicated in the current Schedule of Classes.

This minicourse focuses on environmental issues in the Great Lakes. Topics include the formation and geology of the Great Lakes, hydrology and dynamics of water levels, effect of invasive species on food webs and fisheries, and pollution, particularly the role of nutrients in causing toxic algal blooms.

Benefitting from collaborative instruction that draws on the expertise of professors from three different departments, students will practice systems thinking and examine foundational aspects of food systems from local to global levels across agroecology/environmental, public health/nutrition, and urban planning/policy dimensions.

Dietary and cultural shifts/innovations (for example, cooking, domestication of plants and animals) during human origins may have been 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. We will critically review scientific theories (e.g. thrifty gene hypothesis) explaining how mismatch between old adaptations and modern diets affect human health. This evolutionary analysis may shed new light on the epidemics of “diseases of civilization” and may help to inform public health interventions. Students are expected to be very active participants of class discussions.

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.

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.

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.

 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.

This course uses a geographical political ecology lens to interrogate conflicts (broadly defined) between people and institutions over natural resources, in both developed and developing world contexts.  The course will first review the literature on political ecology as an explanatory framework by tracing out its intellectual genealogy and outlining some of the current approaches and perspectives utilized in this subfield.  Next, we will critique traditional approaches to the study of natural resources related conflicts.  The remainder of the course will rely on theoretical and empirical studies, which help to unveil the complexities associated with conflict environments.  Seven specific themes will be addressed in two parts.  The first part concentrates on political ecological approaches to the study of environmental commodities and (violent) conflict and encompasses: (1) population, resource scarcity and green security, and (2) conflict commodities and extractive natural resources (oil, diamonds, forests, and water).  The second part of the course probes deeper into the social and political aspects of environmental conflicts and specifically examines:  (3) gender and the environment; (4) land, culture and identity; (5) climate change; (6) food security, and; (7) conflicts between people and protected areas.

This course provides an introduction to the fungi through lectures, laboratories, and field trips. We explore fungal biodiversity, ecology, genetics, and the importance of fungi in food and human health. Practical experience, such as isolation and identification of mushrooms, yeasts, and molds is included.

The physical and social forms of cities have significant public health consequences. Infrastructure shapes exposure to environmental toxins, natural disasters, and infectious diseases. Land use patterns and zoning laws determine who has access to healthy food and spaces for physical activity. The design details of streets, buildings, and plazas influence mobility patterns, mental well-being, chronic illness, and violent crime. Additionally, the built environment was one of the most important focus areas during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. In this graduate-level seminar, students will prepare for their professional careers by learning how to design healthier cities. With this knowledge, students will have a foundation for effectively assessing the health risks and wellness opportunities associated with various urban forms, as well as for designing built environment interventions for improving human health and wellness in urban contexts.