This course offers an introduction to Food Studies, an interdisciplinary field that explores the social, cultural, historical, and political aspects of food and eating. We’ll read about and discuss questions like: What should we do about the “obesity epidemic”? What are the philosophical and practical implications of eating animals? Is it really better to eat “local”? Where did the association between African Americans and fried chicken come from? And many more. In addition, we’ll watch several recent documentaries and visit the Culinary Archive at the Clements.

DAAS-In-Action gives students opportunities to collaborate on a class project that requires each student to apply the knowledge and skills they’ve gained in DAAS courses. This 3-credit capstone course would underscore the utility of majoring or minoring in DAAS; it would help students to recognize the concrete skills they have developed and might use to effect change in the world.

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.

Why are people suddenly fighting about milk? Animal-rights activists condemn the treatment of dairy cows. Environmentalists link milk to deforestation, polluted waterways, and melting ice caps. Wellness influencers blame cow’s milk for acne, “leaky gut,” and weight gain—while others swear that raw or fermented milk is the real miracle food. And then there’s the flood of alternatives: oat, soy, almond, coconut, pea (yes, pea milk is a thing). Are they healthier? More sustainable? Or just the latest marketing cycle? This course asks how we got here. We explore how humans around the world first started drinking another species’ milk, how dairy helped people survive harsh environments and build empires, and how it became tied to ideas about race, purity, and “modern” bodies. We also examine why, in recent years, milk has become a wellness obsession, a climate culprit, and even a white supremacist meme.You’ll dive into global dairy traditions—from fermented mare’s milk to buffalo mozzarella—and do some hands-on learning, such as ancient cheeses and other historic milk foods. We’ll also compare dairy with its plant-based rivals and explore the science and politics behind claims about health, sustainability, and safety. By the end of the class, you’ll have the tools to decide for yourself how—or whether—the world should get its milk.

This course explores the changing cultural and social value of food in American life through a range of different sources, disciplines, and case studies. We will be guided by how convenience, responsibility, and identity shape our relationship to a dynamic American food industry, while paying attention to how immigration, trauma, and appropriation constitute the industry itself. By doing so, this course seeks to help students connect the food histories, policies, and myths that converge to define American belonging.

Topics in Archaeology — The course covers a topic in archaeology in depth. The topic varies from term to term.

Food is an essential part of the University of Michigan student experience. What did UM students eat in the past and where does the food served on campus today come from? This seminar examines changes in the food system that has fed UM students in Ann Arbor over the past 150 years and the ways that food is helping the University become more sustainable. We explore all aspects of the food system from production to waste. Experiential learning, including historical research with the Bentley Library student scrapbook collection, a visit to the Campus Farm, and a project with student-led sustainable food organizations, is an essential part of this course. Students will have opportunities to learn directly from the people who are working to make the university food system more local, sustainable and accessible.

This course will focus on the Filipino language, including vocabulary words and expressions used in food and food ways with cultural context. The students will also be able to acquire knowledge in Filipino food and its origin, history, ingredients, method of cooking as well as the similarity and differences in every region.

Do you eat to live, or live to eat? If the latter, this course may be for you. As anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss wrote, the plants and animals around us are not just good to eat, they are good to think with and through. Anthropologists study the human condition in all its forms, including how we evolved as a species, how we communicate, how we lived in the historic and prehistoric past, and how we organize our lives in different parts of the world today. In the realm of food, we thus pay close attention to the ways in which human hunt, fish, gather and grow food, how we get enough calories to survive in differing environments, how food helps us to constitute families, religious identities and other social networks, and even how food comes to be a source and a symptom of social inequality. We will address all of these issues, as well as the symbolic uses and meanings of food in sacred and everyday contexts.

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.

Everyone needs to eat. But the study of food is about more than just nutrition and sustenance. What we eat and how in fact reveals a great deal about who we are, and what we consider acceptable or taboo, virtuous or decadent, modest or self-important. In this class, we’ll focus on what the ancient Greeks and Romans said about eating as a way of understanding their relationship to the gods, money and status, and style and identity. We’ll focus on topics including dinner parties, hunger, sacrifices, cannibalism, and compare some modern theory and examples as well.

A fine line existed between drugs and poisons in the ancient and medieval Mediterranean. For instance, the Hippocratic writers infamously prescribed hellebore, a plant drug that was purported to have therapeutic effects on gynecological and psychological conditions but was toxic at the wrong dosage. This course will investigate where Greco-Roman and medieval pharmacists obtained drugs from the natural world as well as both how and why they used them in their healing practices. Students will gain familiarity with the fascinating and surprisingly global field of pre-modern pharmacy. They will also leave the course with a greater understanding of the ethics of bioprospecting from pre-modern medical sources and the natural world.

“Ecology of Agroecosystems” focuses on ecological principles as they apply to agricultural ecosystems, emphasizing both theoretical aspects and practical applications. It is designed to prepare students for active research in agroecosystem ecology.

This course aims to give students an introduction to the world of mass media, with a strong emphasis on reporting and writing about the environment and public health. This class has consistently won high praise from students for providing personalized, hands-on training in improving writing skills. Students learn from two prize-winning journalists who have more than 40 years combined experience covering the environment and public health for media outlets such as The New York Times, Newsweek, The Detroit Free Press, and National Public Radio. Each week, the course focuses on a different topic in the news related to the environment and public health, such as urban sprawl, energy efficiency, climate change, environmental justice, sustainable develoPMent, garbage, the Great Lakes, and urban agriculture. Students hear from a range of leading experts on the topic of the day, learning not only about the subject itself but also about the process of journalism. Guest speakers are chosen to represent many points of view. They range from corporate executives to environmental activists, scientists, government officials, and journalists.

Past speakers have included the executive director of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice; a state senator; the spokesperson for the Michigan Manufacturers’ Association; The Wall Street Journal’s Detroit Bureau chief; reporters and producers from Michigan Public; and a 60 Minutes producer, among many others. Along the way, instructors guide discussions about media ethics, interviewing skills, freedom-of-information laws, the Internet as a source of information, government databases, and many other journalism-related topics. In-class exercises include writing the first few paragraphs of a story about one of the guest speakers and selecting the best quotes from recorded student-to-student interviews. In-class critiques of student writing also point out the most successful writing techniques. All class activities are designed to give students a broad understanding of how the mass media operates while also sharing tips on how students can participate in the mass media — either as full-time journalists or occasional dabblers in public discussions.

Topics in English Language and Literature — This class considers the various critical approaches to literature, either by direct study or by application to a particular writer, period, or genre.

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.

Everyday, human and natural activities are altering the planet on which we live. Through our increasing resource consumption, population growth, disturbance of natural systems, and technological advancement, we are changing the global climate and environment in a manner that is unique over Earth’s history. Many of these changes are degrading the physical and biological processes that underpin Earth’s life-support systems, which poses a great challenge for society in this century. This course, Global Change — the Science of Sustainability, investigates the causes and impacts of these changes using a combination of traditional lecture-based and modern digital teaching methodologies. The course surveys the evolution and interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes on Earth; how past changes on Earth help us predict the future, especially with respect to climate change; and how fundamental principles of science establish the sustainability of human activities on Earth.

Students apply learned knowledge by using ‘systems modeling’ and spreadsheet software to investigate the dynamics of natural systems and examine case studies of relevant environmental problems.The course curriculum provides excellent opportunities to conduct research on topics of interest to the students, culminating in a course project presented at the end of the academic term. The interactive laboratory exercises provide students the opportunity to use software tools to examine how natural systems function as well as develop projections of the future consequences of changes in the environment. And, perhaps most important of all, students will have ample time for discussion of critical issues in natural resources and sustainability, and the role of environmental science in policy and society as a whole. All topics are developed in a manner that students will find both accessible and interesting. After the course, students should be able to discern sound science from biased claims and will have a foundation for making informed decisions about sustainable practices in their own lives.

This course offers an introduction to the science, policy, and social issues around ecological restoration and explores where local agriculture fits in the larger context of restoration. We examine and discuss a multitude of restoration projects – urban, rural, and natural areas – through the use of case studies, field trips, and guest lectures from local practitioners of restoration ecology. Field trips to local restoration sites will include field exercises to learn how to collect data for site inventory, monitoring, and assessing restoration success.

This course offers hands-on understanding and foundational skill-building in the principles and practices of ecological and organic farming. Based at the UM Campus Farm at Matthaei Botanical Gardens, students will meet weekly for farm walk (field-based lecture) exploring both the theory and practices associated with organic and ecological farming.

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.

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.

We live in a unique time. Cheap energy and technological innovation have transformed the way we live. We can travel vast distances in a few hours. Products of every shape and size fill our homes. Every food imaginable can be bought at any time we wish. While these advances have certainly enriched our lives in many ways they have also come at a cost. The consumption-based lifestyle that we have embraced is not only altering the climate and degrading ecosystems, but it is increasing jeopardizing human health. Encouraging people to adopt more environmentally sustainable lifestyles, however, has proven to be challenging. If people believe this coming transition will involve sacrifice and a more difficult way of life they will be unlikely to get involved. Fortunately, an alternative perspective is possible. What if we could create an environmentally sustainable future that is better equipped to support human health and well-being than our current lifestyle? Would people be more willing to participate and try out new ways of doing things?

The purpose of this course is to explore this idea by considering how the environment influences our health and well-being. In order to tackle this complex topic, we will begin by identifying the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of human health. We then explore how climate change could negatively impact human health and consider the ways in which our modern lifestyle makes it difficult for us to achieve and maintain good health. Finally, we will think about how the shift to a more sustainable lifestyle could positively impact our health and well-being.

The Great Lakes region includes the 5 Great Lakes and a bi-national political boundary that includes parts of eight US states and Canada. It is an economically important region, with seven major cities and is home to over 30 million people. This class develops the perspective that sustainability focuses on enabling continued economic growth in the region in a way that minimizes environmental harm and improves quality of life. We consider real-world decisions that need to be made, which are never simple but are sometimes presented in simple terms or from only one perspective. Students will learn to examine complexities, tradeoffs, and joint goals and outcomes for sustainability issues using critical thinking and efforts to understand multiple perspectives.

This course uses a case-study approach. Rather than learning general principles about a single discipline, we analyze eight specific, real-world case studies that represent the range of sustainability issues in the Great Lakes region. Case studies focus on water use and water quality, the food system, river restoration, mining, electric vehicles and clean energy, invasive species, wildlife conservation, and more. Each issue is analyzed in a way that crosses disciplines, crosses cultures, crosses ecosystems and scales, and has multiple types of stakeholders that often do not agree on the definition of the problem. We will draw from a range of disciplines and perspectives as needed to understand each case, including environmental sciences, economics, jobs, public policy and regulation at multiple levels of government, legal issues and the courts, political aspects, cultural aspects, and considerations of environmental justice.

Throughout history, societies and their political institutions have grappled with their environments. Whether allocating land, ensuring sustainable food supplies, building infrastructure, or endeavoring to avoid floods and fire, many of the problems we face with contemporary climate change have long challenged state leaders and administrators. In this class, we examine how political institutions and their environment mutually construct each other. Through active discussion and debates, we study how societies and their politics manage and shape the environment, and how our environmental context and our understanding of it mold political institutions and decisions. Throughout the course, we will draw upon diverse theoretical frameworks to examine a wide variety of historical and international case studies. Ranging across Roman canals, Moroccan solar projects, indigenous North American resource governance, Australian land settlement, local politics in postcolonial Senegal, contemporary land-grabs, and many other cases, this course aims to help us better understand core topics in political and environmental sociology, including legibility theory, state formation, climate adaptation, and environmental inequality. In prioritizing international comparison, long-term transformation, and historical legacies, this course aims to illuminate the deep roots of current climate challenges and develop analytical tools and context to better address them.

Food in German-speaking Europe is more than Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, and Spätzle. In this course, you’ll dive into the diverse and delicious food culture across Germany and some of its German-speaking neighbors, exploring everything from traditional recipes to the modern, multicultural flavors that define today’s cuisine. You’ll discover how dishes reflect cultural values, which role food plays in festivities around the year, how it impacts our health and environment, and how it is portrayed in the media. Learn about regional specialties, contemporary cooking methods, and the stories behind some of the most beloved meals in German-speaking Europe.

During the 15th to 18th centuries, Europeans made direct ties to Africa, the Americas, and Asia-an era known as the “Age of Discovery.” They profited from imported goods and ideas. Scientific “discovery” was an instrument of imperial domination, and a justification for colonial efforts as benevolent. What was the European worldview in the early modern period that enabled this behavior and approach? What knowledge was imported to Europe, what was left behind? What purposes – commercial, scientific, and ideological – did these so-called “discoveries” serve? And how did the advancement of Natural History itself act as a justification for further colonial projects? This course will discuss what we know of the indigenous knowledge before contact, which Indigenous ideas Europeans rejected and/or exploited and why, and how the import of plants, medicines, foods, etc., altered life back in Europe. We will work with ancient and early modern texts, images, and collections (i.e., Wunderkammer), critiquing the rhetorical approach of “Discovery” and its lingering presence in the legacy of Humanities as an intellectual and academic pursuit today.

Study of body mass regulation including the understanding of food, digestion, metabolism and different intervention strategies such as a diet and exercise. Students learn assessment and prescription principles and techniques.

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.

Food systems include all of the steps involved in getting food from farms and fields to people’s plates. This includes how food is grown, processed, transported, sold, eaten, and discarded, as well as the people, places, and institutions involved along the way. This course introduces students to food systems from a geographic perspective, focusing on how food-related activities vary across space and place.The course asks several guiding questions: How do environmental conditions shape how food is grown and animal reared? What foods are produced or harvested in different world regions? How does food move from producers to consumers, often across long distances and national borders? Why do food access, diets, and nutrition differ across communities and regions? How do culture, labor, and economic systems shape the way food systems operate? Students will learn core geographic concepts and apply them to food systems through lectures, discussions, and case studies from around the world. The course provides foundational background on the history of food production and examines patterns in food harvesting, supply chains, labor, trade, and consumption. Students will also gain introductory experience using geographic information systems (GIS) to explore spatial data and create maps that help visualize food system patterns. By the end of the course, students will be able to describe how food systems are organized across space, explain why they vary from place to place, and use basic geographic tools to analyze real-world food system examples

Overview of historic and present-day causes of species extinction, and of biological principles central to species conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems. Topics covered include episodes of extinction and diversification over earth history; geographic distribution strategies; and sustainable use of ecosystems. Weekly recitation sections discuss material from lectures, assigned readings and films, and perform computer and gaming simulations.

Study of how everyday things—the food we consume, the clothes we wear, the furniture we sit on—intertwine urban dwellers with distant people, places, and spaces. The course provides theoretical and methodological approaches to understand how supply chains and networks are perpetually reconfigured by processes of (de)globalization and the role of corporations, nation-states, labor, NGOs, and consumers. The course provides understanding on efforts to make supply chains more sustainable, resilient, and humane. Students will learn the skills necessary to track the origin of products through the supply chain, as well as methods and practices to calculate the carbon footprint of corporate supply chains, especially Scope 3 emissions.

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.

In this interdisciplinary course, we will critically explore intersecting literature on agroecology, biodiversity, ecosystem services, diversified farming systems, agroforestry, and farmer’s livelihoods. The first part of the course will focus on the application of ecological theory to the study of diverse farming systems including intercropping and agroforestry. The second part will emphasize biodiversity both in terms of how agricultural landscapes affect biodiversity and how biodiversity contributes to the sustainability, productivity and resilience of agroecosystems and farming communities. The last part of the course will cover some of the most salient social issues in diverse farming systems, such as tree and land tenure and gender issues as well as the social rural movements that promote diverse farming systems and agroecology.

Climate change is sometimes called the greatest challenge humanity as a whole has ever faced. It is a truly global collective action problem, whose social costs will be massive, widespread, unpredictable, and inequitably distributed. Economic analysis of the climate problem is valuable for a number of reasons: economics provides a framework for understanding incentives for human behavior; it facilitates the measurement of costs and benefits; and it is a language to which people listen, from the highest levels of government down to the individual household. In this course, we will use the lens of economics to clarify the challenge of climate change, understand market function in emissions-intensive industries, and evaluate the theoretical and empirical impacts of the climate policies at our disposal. We will start by reviewing some foundational economic concepts and studying the impacts of climate change. From there, we will set our sights on the general policy problem and assess the performance of different policy instruments along a variety of dimensions. In the second half of the course, we will focus on specific sectors: electricity, transportation, and agriculture and industry.

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 & the environment; (4) land, culture & identity; (5) climate change; (6) food security, and; (7) conflicts between people and protected areas.

The goal of this course is to understand the historical and current intersections of environmental justice as a philosophy, practice, and social movement praxis. The course will cover the origins of the environmental justice movement in the U.S., the meanings associated with the term “environmental justice” and the historical and current intersections to food justice and food sovereignty. The course will examine historical and current events and analyze the various resistance strategies employed by social movements to resist environmental injustices. An international lens will be explored to build an understanding of environmental justice and its food-based intersections on a global level. Students will develop a broad understanding of the historical and contemporary factors that shape the emergence of environmental justice movements around the world, including the mechanisms that give rise to class, gender, racial, and other types of disparities. Students will gain an overall understanding of the topic through analyzing policy, research, and community discourses as it relates to community self-determination and empowerment sought by environmental justice movements

This course will convey the basic concepts of occupational and environmental exposure science: the fundamental and practical aspects of assessing and controlling exposures to hazardous agents, broadly defined, encountered in occupational, residential, and ambient environments. The course is designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary to assess exposure, and understand how upstream processes create risks for health. Major topics include: the regulatory landscape; prevention and sustainability (by design); recognition and evaluation of the various pathways and routes of exposure to chemical, physical, and biological hazards; air, water, soil, surface, food, and consumer product contamination; control hierarchies, strategies, and technologies, criteria, and standards; the international dimension; and ethical issues.

This course presents an overview of mortality and disease occurrence in terms of geographic, cultural, nutritional and environmental factors. Reviews health indicators such as infant mortality and economic factors associated with develoPMent. Discusses health problems of developing countries and describes programs and organizations involved in addressing them. This course is required for students in the International Health track in Epidemiology but can also be taken by non International Health students.

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.

In this novel course, students will understand, translate and incorporate the emerging fields of nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, culinary medicine and the microbiome into personalized nutrition practice grounded in public health principles.

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 provides a comprehensive introduction to the methods and approaches for conducting nutrition assessment of individuals and populations throughout the lifecycle. The course is structured into three assessment components: dietary, biochemical, and body size and body composition. Main topics include in-depth overview of the assessment methods, strengths and limitations of methodology, evaluation and interpretation of assessment data, sources of measurement errors, validity of assessment methods, and basic analytical approaches used to interpret assessment data.

The physical and social forms of cities have significant public health consequences. Infrastructure shapes people’s exposure to environmental toxins, natural disasters, and infectious disease. Land use patterns and zoning laws determine whether people have access to healthy food and spaces for physical activity. The design details of streets, buildings, and plazas influence patterns of everyday mobility, mental wellbeing, chronic illness, and violent crime. In this graduate-level seminar, students will prepare for their professional careers as city planners by learning how to design healthier cities. Students will study planning techniques from the past that brought sanitation services and green spaces into urban centers and that created protections against unsafe living and working conditions in industrial contexts. Students will also learn how old environmental concerns are re-emerging today in unexpected forms, and they will study the new urban health risks that are appearing in mega-cities and slum-cities around the world. With this knowledge, students will develop knowledge and skills that will help them effectively assess the health risks associated with various urban forms and to design interventions that can improve human health outcomes in the cities of the future.

How does the trash get delivered? How does a grocery clerk end up enforcing federal nutrition policy? Why do bike lanes change when you cross a city line? This course is designed for students across disciplines who want to build fluency in how public services work and to examine the latency between policy develoPMent and on-the-ground implementation, across federal, state, and local government as well as public institutions like libraries, transit systems, and utilities. The first half of the semester introduces service fundamentals through case studies, historical analysis, and discussion. In the second half, students conduct service analysis and research and produce final projects that examine a service of their choosing. Students leave with practical tools for understanding service systems and an expanded understanding of the verbs that animate cities.

This course considers the content and consequences of the range of state and local policies that relateto renewable energy develoPMent in urban and rural communities. It also considers how planners can shape wind and solar projects. It covers not just policies traditionally associated with climate action—such as the carbon tax, cap and trade, renewable portfolio standards, or municipal climate pledges—but also the suite of policies that facilitate or hinder renewable energy develoPMent. This includes state tax policy, local land use regulation, infrastructure investment, and use of public lands. It also explores the diverse stakeholders who shape these policies and the motivations behind their positions—from economic develoPMent, to energy independence, to landowners’ rights.

This course is about revealing the powerful ways that food shapes our lives. Food is rapidly becoming a focal point for pedagogy and research because it lies at the nexus, and intersects multiple disciplines. It is essential to life and our health is heavily reliant upon adequate nutrition. The production and distribution of food is also deeply political and under strain from economic and social forces. This course uses a holistic approach to better investigate the complex ways that food impacts our lives and how food insecurity contributes to income, social, and political inequality in the US.